Analyzing a Fake BBC News Site

labs.opendns.com

48 points·philip1209··8 comments

"we cannot conclude that the threat actor’s intent was malicious"

So you sinkhole the domain because of a fake news story and some twitter posts?

well there's also a pretty blatant domain name spoofing..

It isn't just disinformation it is click fraud and a way to earn money via advertising by pretending to be the BBC site.

They fooled Reddit and Facebook users into spreading the link.

Five minutes' googling/whoising and I found at least two other domains run by the same person, who seems to be just some ordinary bloke.

e.g. http://who.is/whois/huntingnews.co.uk

Or maybe that is part of the international cover-up, and this goes deeper than anybody. could. have. guessed..?

> smoke is shown to emit from the weapon, with no impact or trauma appearing to register on the body of the victim.

Not to lend credit to conspiracy theories or anything like that, but I wondered this myself when I watched the video. Can anyone explain this for someone who isn't an expert in ballistics/forensics?

Unless you shoot a stuntman, rigged with bloodpacks, you aren't going to see blood jet out of a gunshot wound. You usually only get a pink mist of atomized blood (which you wouldn't be able to see in the video).

I believe that their cover was blown early and not enough data is available to analyze their intents.

Now, it could simply be click fraud or it could have been the initial steps for a longer running disinformation program, but it is difficult to tell with the limited data available.

I'm pretty sure this qualifies as 'satire' these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com