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This is the story of the mastermind of one of the largest “fake news” operations in the United States.

For two years, he ran websites and Facebook teams that spread false stories, conspiracy theories and propaganda. Below him, a committed team of writers and editors who were paid to produce misleading content, from jokes to political propaganda, with the ultimate goal of giving clues. the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

Through a great effort, he built a secret network of self-reinforcing sites from scratch. He devised a strategy that led figures, including Trump, to retweet misleading accusations to their supporters. And he deceived reckless U. S. citizens, adding the hacker’s own father. see fake data resources more strongly than conventional media.

Experts and governments would possibly have given Russia too much credibility, he says, when a complete formula for manipulating people’s beliefs and psychology was designed and operated from the United States.

“Russia played such a small role that they weren’t even an echo on the radar,” the hacker recently told me. “Although it was general for politicians. . . if you go to bed enough, everyone will. “

Formerly nicknamed “Hacker X,” he is now in a position to reveal who he is and how he did it.

Because he asks that the company he worked for be explicitly named, Ars referred to the fake news company with. . . a false name, Koala Media.

The fake news entrepreneur who now has to break his silence is “ethical hacker” Robert Willis.

Some members of the data safety net may know “Rob” today as an active member who speaks in meetings and works with the moral hacking organization Sakura Samurai. and personal entities I’ve already interacted with Rob about twice, at least, when I had questions about Sakura Samurai’s vulnerability reports. )

But in 2015, Willis just another hacker looking for a task in computer science. He had already won a homework offer, but he still had an interview scheduled at one last company.

“I don’t think I would show up for the interview,” he told me. “After all, I had just joined the company.

The last corporate was opaque: it wouldn’t reveal its calling or the true purposes of the position until Willis showed up in person, but the opacity itself was intriguing. Willis to do the interview.

“I showed up at the venue, which was a big corporate building. I was ordered to wait downstairs until I was picked up. The secret was intriguing. Possibly I would have discouraged other people, but I love adventure. data about the task plus the fact that they were very excited, as locating someone like me was very rare – I had tons of random, overlapping, highly technical skills after years of wearing hats in smaller personal ventures. “

Even before his moral hacking days at Sakura Samurai, Willis had acquired extensive technical skills in the networking spaces, internet applications, hacking, security, search engine optimization (SEO), graphic design, entrepreneurship, and management. Once, he said, get a random word in the first position in an engine within 24 hours. “Many will say it is/was impossible, but I have the receipts,” he said, “and other credible people too. “

At the place of the interview a guy came to pick him up and they took the elevator to a floor with an almost empty office, inside he was waiting for a woguy next to 3 chairs, everyone sat down. His hosts nevertheless revealed the call of his company: Koala Media. The moment felt like an orchestrated Big Reveal.

“I’m not afraid yet, I’m excited to see how crazy it’s already getting,” Willis told me. I told him that there were big plans for the workplace he was sitting in and that they had already hired the first editors and editors of the new operation. “

The company’s interviewers told Willis that “everything had to be built with safety in mind, at excessive levels. “

If he gets the job, his main function would be to temporarily expand an exclusive and popular online page that was already owned by Koala Media, for which they needed Willis’ varied skills.

The interview then took a political turn: “I was told they opposed big business and big government because they’re essentially the same,” Willis said. They said they had readers from the right and left. They said they were talking about “freedom. “This sounded smart to Willis, who describes himself as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative: “very punk rock, almost anarchist. “

Then the interviewers told him, “If you paint for us, you can prevent Hillary Clinton.

“She hated the establishment, Republicans and Democrats, and Hillary was the target because she was as established as you could imagine and she was the only candidate who was virtually guaranteed to run at the highest price of the 2016 long-term cycle,” Willis said. If I had to decide on a lesser evil at the time, it would certainly have been the Republican Party, as I had moved to the new city because the Democrats literally destroyed my old house-state. It was like a clever revenge. “

Willis says he had no indication that the company that was about to recruit him was excessive or that it would do so in the future. According to him, the company was just an “investigation” into his journalism.

When Koala presented him with the job, he accepted it.

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