Sawt Falasteen - Thai-Cambodian cyberwarriors battle on despite truce

The five-day conflict left more than 40 people dead and drove more than 300,000 from their homes.

It also kicked off a disinformation blitz as Thai and Cambodian partisans alike sought to boost the narrative that the other was to blame.

Thai officials recorded more than 500 million instances of online attacks in recent days, government spokesperson Jirayu Huangsab said on Wednesday.

These included spamming reports to online platforms and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks -- halting access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic.

"It's a psychological war," Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona told AFP.

"There's a lot of fake news and it wouldn't be strange if it came from social media users, but even official Thai media outlets themselves publish a lot of fake news."

- Disinformation -

Freshly created "avatar" accounts have targeted popular users or media accounts in Thailand.

On July 24, a Facebook post by suspended Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra condemning Cambodia's use of force was bombarded with 16,000 comments, many of them repeating the same message in English: "Queen of drama in Thailand".

Another, similar post by Paetongtarn on July 26 was hit with 31,800 comments, many reading: "Best drama queen of 2025", with snake and crocodile emojis.

Government spokesman Jirayu said the attacks were aimed at "sowing division among Thais" as well as outright deception.

Similarly, Cambodian government Spokesman Pen Bona said fake news from Thailand aimed to divide Cambodia.

Apparent bot accounts have also published and shared disinformation, adding to the confusion.

Videos and images from a deadly Cambodian rocket attack on a petrol station in Thailand were shared with captions saying they showed an attack on Cambodian soil.

Other posts, including one shared by the verified page of Cambodian Secretary of State Vengsrun Kuoch, claimed Thai forces had used chemical weapons.

The photo in the post in fact shows an aircraft dropping fire retardants during the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025.

AFP contacted Vengsrun Kuoch for comment but did not receive a reply.

- Obscenities -

Hackers from both sides have broken into state-run websites to deface pages with mocking or offensive messages.

One of the targets was NBT World, an English-language news site run by the Thai government's public relations department.

Headlines and captions on articles about acting prime minister Phumtham Wechayachai were replaced with obscenities.

Thai hackers meanwhile, changed the login page of Sachak Asia Development Institute, a Cambodian education facility, to show an image of influential ex-leader Hun Sen edited to have a ludicrously exaggerated hairstyle.

The image was a reference to a video -- much mocked in Thailand -- of Cambodian youths sporting the same hairstyle visiting one of the ancient temples that were the focus of the fighting.

Online attacks -- whether disinformation messaging or full-blown cyber strikes to disrupt an adversary's infrastructure or services -- are a standard feature of modern warfare.

In the Ukraine conflict, Kyiv and its allies have long accused Russia of state-backed cyberwarfare, disrupting government and private IT systems around the world.

And earlier this week, Ukrainian and Belarusian hacker groups claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Russia's national airline that grounded dozens of flights.

Jessada Salathong, a mass communications professor at Thailand's Chulalongkorn University, said the border clashes had invoked the full spectrum of information disorder, carried out by both sides.

"In an era when anyone can call themselves media, information warfare simply pulls in everyone," he told AFP.

O.Salim--SF-PST