# Technique T0097.103: Activist Persona * **Summary**: A person with an activist persona presents themselves as an activist; an individual who campaigns for a political cause, organises related events, etc.

While presenting as an activist is not an indication of inauthentic behaviour, an influence operation may have its narratives amplified by people presenting as activists. Threat actors can fabricate activists to give the appearance of popular support for an evolving grassroots movement (see T0143.002: Fabricated Persona, T0097.103: Activist Persona).

People who are legitimate activists can use this persona for malicious purposes, or be exploited by threat actors. For example, someone could take money for using their position as an activist to provide visibility to a false narrative or be tricked into doing so without their knowledge (T0143.001: Authentic Persona, T0097.103: Activist Persona).

Associated Techniques and Sub-techniques
T0097.104: Hacktivist Persona: Analysts should use this sub-technique to catalogue cases where an individual is presenting themselves as someone engaged in activism who uses technical tools and methods, including building technical infrastructure and conducting offensive cyber operations, to achieve their goals.
T0097.207: NGO Persona: People with an activist persona may present as being part of an NGO.
T0097.208: Social Cause Persona: Analysts should use this sub-technique to catalogue cases where an online account is presenting as posting content related to a particular social cause, while not presenting as an individual. * **Belongs to tactic stage**: TA16 | Incident | Descriptions given for this incident | | -------- | -------------------- | | [I00069 Uncharmed: Untangling Iran's APT42 Operations](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00069.md) | “In March 2023, [Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage actor] APT42 sent a spear-phishing email with a fake Google Meet invitation, allegedly sent on behalf of Mona Louri, a likely fake persona leveraged by APT42, claiming to be a human rights activist and researcher. Upon entry, the user was presented with a fake Google Meet page and asked to enter their credentials, which were subsequently sent to the attackers.”

In this example APT42, an Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage actor, created an account which presented as a human rights activist (T0097.103: Activist Persona) and researcher (T0097.107: Researcher Persona). The analysts assert that it was likely the persona was fabricated (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona) | | [I00077 Fronts & Friends: An Investigation into Two Twitter Networks Linked to Russian Actors](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00077.md) | “The Syria portion of the network [of inauthentic accounts attributed to Russia] included additional sockpuppet accounts. One of these claimed to be a gay rights defender in Syria. Several said they were Syrian journalists. Another account, @SophiaHammer3, said she was born in Syria but currently lives in London. “I’m fond of history and politics. I struggle for justice.” Twitter users had previously observed that Sophia was likely a sockpuppet.”

This behaviour matches T0097.103: Activist Persona because the account presents itself as defending a political cause - in this case gay rights.

Twitter’s technical indicators allowed their analysts to assert that these accounts were “reliably tied to Russian state actors”, meaning the presented personas were entirely fabricated (T0143.002: Fabricated Persona); these accounts are not legitimate gay rights defenders or journalists, they’re assets controlled by Russia publishing narratives beneficial to their agenda. | | [I00080 Hundreds Of Propaganda Accounts Targeting Iran And Qatar Have Been Removed From Facebook](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00080.md) | “One example of a fake reporter account targeting Americans is “Jenny Powell,” a self-described Washington-based journalist, volunteer, and environmental activist. At first glance, Powell’s Twitter timeline looks like it belongs to a young and eager reporter amplifying her interests. But her profile photo is a stock image, and many of her links go to the propaganda sites.

“Powell, who joined the platform just last month, shares links to stories from major US news media outlets, retweets local news about Washington, DC, and regularly promotes content from The Foreign Code and The Economy Club. Other fake journalist accounts behaved similarly to Powell and had generic descriptions. One of the accounts, for a fake Bruce Lopez in Louisiana, has a bio that describes him as a “Correspondent Traveler noun|linking verb|noun/verb/adjective|,” which appears to reveal the formula used to write Twitter bios for the accounts.”

The Jenny Powel account used in this influence operation presents as both a journalist and an activist (T0097.102: Journalist Persona, T0097.103: Activist Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona). This example shows how threat actors can easily follow a template to present a fabricated persona to their target audience (T0144.002: Persona Template). | | [I00082 Meta’s November 2021 Adversarial Threat Report ](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00082.md) | “[Meta] removed 41 Facebook accounts, five Groups, and four Instagram accounts for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. This activity originated in Belarus and primarily targeted audiences in the Middle East and Europe.

“The core of this activity began in October 2021, with some accounts created as recently as mid-November. The people behind it used newly-created fake accounts — many of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems soon after creation — to pose as journalists and activists from the European Union, particularly Poland and Lithuania. Some of the accounts used profile photos likely generated using artificial intelligence techniques like generative adversarial networks (GAN). These fictitious personas posted criticism of Poland in English, Polish, and Kurdish, including pictures and videos about Polish border guards allegedly violating migrants’ rights, and compared Poland’s treatment of migrants against other countries’. They also posted to Groups focused on the welfare of migrants in Europe. A few accounts posted in Russian about relations between Belarus and the Baltic States.”

This example shows how accounts identified as participating in coordinated inauthentic behaviour were presenting themselves as journalists and activists while spreading operation narratives (T0097.102: Journalist Persona, T0097.103: Activist Persona).

Additionally, analysts at Meta identified accounts which were participating in coordinated inauthentic behaviour that had likely used AI-Generated images as their profile pictures (T0145.002: AI-Generated Account Imagery)., “[Meta] removed a network of accounts in Vietnam for violating our Inauthentic Behavior policy against mass reporting. They coordinated the targeting of activists and other people who publicly criticized the Vietnamese government and used false reports of various violations in an attempt to have these users removed from our platform. The people behind this activity relied primarily on authentic and duplicate accounts to submit hundreds — in some cases, thousands — of complaints against their targets through our abuse reporting flows.

“Many operators also maintained fake accounts — some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems — to pose as their targets so they could then report the legitimate accounts as fake. They would frequently change the gender and name of their fake accounts to resemble the target individual. Among the most common claims in this misleading reporting activity were complaints of impersonation, and to a much lesser extent inauthenticity. The network also advertised abusive services in their bios and constantly evolved their tactics in an attempt to evade detection.“

In this example actors repurposed their accounts to impersonate targeted activists (T0097.103: Activist Persona, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona) in order to falsely report the activists’ legitimate accounts as impersonations (T0124.001: Report Non-Violative Opposing Content) | | Counters | Response types | | -------- | -------------- | DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW