London, Thanasis Gavos

Group of Israelis hackers that offer disinformation and manipulation services online and claim to have influenced the outcome of 33 electoral processes around the world, an international media consortium reveals.

As the British Guardian writes, the group is run by 50-year-old Tal Hanan, a former member of Israel’s special forces, using the pseudonym “Jorge“, from which the group of hackers (Team Jorge) takes its name.

He denies the allegations, but has revealed his modus operandi in a series of six-hour videos shot by three reporters posing as potential clients representing a volatile African regime seeking to delay elections.

As he himself told them, his team is being recruited by security intelligence agencies, political entities and businesses that want to manipulate public opinion.

He claimed that Team Jorge has acted on Africain Latin Americaat USA and to Europeoffering, among other things, the advanced Aims (Advanced Impact Media Solutions) operating system.

This operating system can control an “army” of thousands of fake accounts across all social and communication media, which even appear on sites like Amazon as real users.

By gaining access to email and social media accounts, the Jorge Group collects information about their clients’ opponents and then plants false stories on social media and mainstream media. These stories are then replicated by fake accounts online, influencing public opinion.

According to the Guardian, in one of the initial conversations with reporters, Hannan said: “We are now involved in an electoral process in Africa. We have a team at Hellas and a team in the Emirates”.

The newspaper reports that it has not been possible to verify all of Hasan’s claims to journalists he saw as potential clients.

However, the journalists detected the activity of some of the fake accounts created with the Aims software and found their involvement mainly in business disputes in countries such as the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, India, Senegal, Belarus, but also Greece, among many others.

“Jorge” also said that he charges between 6 and 15 million euros for each election interference operation.

In addition to the Guardian, publications such as the French Le Monde, the German Der Spiegel and the Spanish El País participate in the journalistic consortium, under the coordination of the French non-profit organization Forbidden Stories.