As politics in Sudan take a drastic shift after the emergence of a major divide within the country's armed forces that led to intense military clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), social media emerged as a powerful tool via which adversaries are fighting through narratives, disinformation, and bots.

Social Media: A Major Player

At least 900 potentially hijacked Twitter accounts are retweeting and liking articles published by the Rapid Support Force (RSF) of Sudan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF's commander and vice-president of the ruling council of Sudan. The accounts have carried on amplifying RSF information from the start of the violent clashes, which erupted on 15 April 2023, as per a data analysis made by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council.

The findings made public on Tuesday unmasked that an online battle is being waged for the narrative alongside a battle that is being fought with live fire and tanks.

#Sudan is plunged into complete chaos one day after clashes broke out between the #Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). pic.twitter.com/C4zxUOWKEJ

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) April 16, 2023

After harvesting the user data for any account that liked recent tweets posted by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo the head of the RSF and deputy leader of Sudan’s ruling council, dubbed Hemedti, and by the RSF, the Digital Forensic Research Lab was able to identify the accounts. Since neither the SAF nor its head Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan had active Twitter accounts at the time of data collection, the DFRLab was unable to undertake a study of a comparable nature on them.

The accounts all followed a similar pattern: many were reactivated in December 2022 after going dormant for years, tweeting a string of words plagiarized from Wikipedia pages, before boosting tweets from Hemedti and the RSF. In an effort to appear more authentic, the accounts also tweeted motivational sayings in Arabic.

Many of the accounts included indications that they had once been used by actual users, such as links to their own Instagram profiles and tweets with personal information. Nearly none of the 900 discovered accounts followed either the RSF or Hemedti on Twitter, despite their efforts to promote the RSF and Hemedti.

As soon as the accounts began liking posts about the RSF and Hemedti published by journalists, news organizations, and other accounts with a few thousand followers, the behavior pattern altered as of March 30.

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"On April 1, some of the accounts in the network liked a tweet that read, Our enemy in the first place is the Kizan army, not the rapid support, our enemy in the first place is the Kizan, not the Janjaweed….” Kizan refers to individuals from former President Omar Al-Bashir’s National Congress Party and those supportive of the former regime, while Janjaweed is a reference to the Arab militia that grew into the RSF," the report noted.

On April 13, two days after the civilian-led transitional administration was supposed to take effect, there was yet another mention of Kizan. The hashtag أي_كوز_ندوسو_دوس# was tweeted by a subset of users, and it approximately translates to "Every Koz, we will trample over them." In this context, the single form of Kizan is Koz. Just after three in the morning, Central African Time, the accounts tweeted the hashtag. The subgroup has not liked or tweeted any further stuff since then.

Several accounts concentrated on retweeting one specific RSF tweet regarding an RSF general's visit to a children's hospital, in addition to liking RSF and Hemedti content. A total of 105 people retweeted the post, with 81 of those tweets coming from the identified accounts. Separately, two accounts responded to the RSF's tweets about Hemedti's most recent trip to Eritrea. The same wording appeared in both of them and said, "Sudan's next president, God willing."

The accounts investigated by DFRLab continued to like posts on Twitter as hostilities between Hemedti and Al-Burhan grew more intense. It's possible that the potentially hijacked accounts are being used to boost the RSF and Hemedti's tweets and appeal to a more global audience with English-language tweets. The accounts also aim to promote the group's narrative about the ongoing clashes-- alleging that Al-Burhan is a radical Islamist and that the RSF responded to an attack initiated by the SAF.

Beam Reports, a Sudanese media site that specializes in fact-checking and misinformation investigations, has previously looked into several of the accounts that are being investigated by DFRLab. Other instances of possibly phony or fraudulent accounts that were being used to advertise the RSF on various social media sites have been uncovered by Beam Reports.

DFRLab reported in October 2021 on a Facebook network engaging in planned unauthentic activity to advance the RSF. Facebook deleted the network because of "coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity." The network had ties to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is worth noting that Hemedti and the RSF have had a long-standing partnership with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Fact-checked: Twitter accounts hijacked 

Many of the nine hundred accounts that the DFRLab investigated have been repeatedly hijacked and used for different purposes after being managed by legal people at first, as per the report.

Here are the indicators: previous usage, mismatched usernames and screen names, Generic profile pictures, and suspicious posting times.

Large scale operation

In response to a search on Meltwater Explore for the term "customers to a brand or product Requires extensive M," provided by user @Dilean_Drakuli, it was discovered that 614 users had posted it between November 1, 2022, and April 17, 2023.

The date and time in each tweet were identical to the times at which they were posted, even if the string itself remained constant. The number of accounts was significantly higher than when the DFRLab first ran this query on March 15, 2023, indicating some of the accounts in the bigger network may have already been deactivated.

DFRLab found a network of perhaps hacked accounts that were promoting the RSF and Hemedti, and it appears that this network is only a minor part of a bigger one. The network tweeted Wikipedia strings, and hundreds of other accounts also tweeted them.

The Wikipedia text followed by an upper case "M" was not always present in accounts that appear to be a member of this wider network. Instead, it appears that several letter mashups were employed as identities.

The aforementioned analyzed data exposed that the dominant forces in Sudan shifted their policies from cutting off internet connectivity to the weaponization of social media alongside an ongoing battle instead.

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