Countries targeted by disinformation campaign Secondary Infektion 2014-2020

“Secondary Infektion” – the name given to the long-running operation – is defined as a collection of online disinformation actions that constituted a methodic campaign carried out on global social media, blogging platforms, and online information outlets. Between 2014 and 2020, Ukraine was the most targeted country by disinformation content related to the operation Secondary Infektion. Posts created by Secondary Infektion targeting Ukraine were 863 and constituted 32 percent of the total, while approximately 362 posts contained content mentioning or targeting the United States. Despite being active across multiple platforms and languages, the operation never appeared to gain substantial engagement.

In May 2019, Facebook announced it had removed a small network of 16 accounts and pages active on Facebook and Instagram, as part of its efforts to contrast Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior, or CIB. Facebook's findings were shared with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, which was able to connect the removed accounts and pages to a wider network of disinformation agents and operations. Such network was renamed "Secondary Infektion," due to its similarity to the original disinformation campaign "Operation Infektion". Planted in English-language global media by the Soviet Union's main security agency in the 1980s, Operation Infektion main object was to spread disinformation around the origins of the HIV virus and to create social destabilization, mainly in the United States.