Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has instructed local ISPs to disable access to 10 websites found to pose a “potential threat of being used to mount hostile information campaigns against Singapore”.

The 10 sites – including one alleging that Singapore has allowed other countries to conduct their biological warfare research activities in the country – were flagged by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

The orders were issued under Section 16 of Singapore’s Broadcasting Act 1994.

“These 10 inauthentic websites have been observed to masquerade as Singapore websites by spoofing or using terms associated with Singapore in their domain name and incorporating familiar local features and visuals,” the IMDA said in a statement.

“They also carried content on Singapore, some of which were generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). These are common tactics used by malicious foreign actors,” the agency said.

Two of the sites – www.zaobaodaily.com and www.singaporeinfomap.com – utilised domain names “closely related or similar to legitimate Singapore-related websites, and carried content that might mislead their audience into thinking that the content is reflective of official positions or local sentiments”.

A second network of seven sites utilised the word “Singapore” or associated terms in their domain name (such as Singapura, Singdao, Lioncity), and published Singapore-related content.

“They carried content which was identical to that carried by another foreign newswire that appears to have conducted hostile information campaigns and influence campaigns against other countries,” the IMDA said.

The last of the 10 sites, Alamak.io, presented itself as a Singapore news website through the use of a Singapore-associated colloquial expression “Alamak” as its domain name and carriage of Singapore-related news articles that paraphrased articles published by local mainstream media.

Investigations found that the majority of the articles published on this website were likely to have been written with AI tools, the IMDA said.

“This website also published commentaries on socio-political issues, including one that falsely alleged that Singapore had allowed other countries to conduct their biological warfare research activities here,” it continued.

The IMDA added that there were “many overseas cases where malicious foreign actors had created and used inauthentic news websites to propagate false narratives to sway the target population’s sentiments, in order to advance their own interests. They do so by inciting social tension, exploiting societal fault lines, manipulating elections, or undermining confidence and trust in public institutions”.

The authority pointed out that most of the blocked sites were associated with global networks of inauthentic news websites that have been reported by cybersecurity researchers from Mandiant and The Citizen Lab to have conducted HICs and influence campaigns in other countries.