Category Archives: Internet Research Agency

Stark Industries Solutions: An Iron Hammer in the Cloud

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Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government and commercial targets in Ukraine and Europe. An investigation into Stark Industries reveals it is being used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia. Continue reading Stark Industries Solutions: An Iron Hammer in the Cloud→

Russia’s digital warriors adapt to support the war effort in Ukraine, Google threat researchers say

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Russian hacking operations in support of intelligence gathering and information operations related to the war show no signs of slowing down.

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Russian disinformation rampant on far-right social media platforms

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The report found a web of 35 accounts linked to suspected Russian information operators spreading lies about rigged elections, the Ukraine war and political issues.

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Cyber Front Z, a Russian troll operation ousted from Facebook, was clumsy, ineffective, according to Meta

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The details were part of the company’s larger quarterly adversarial threat report.

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How recent disinformation campaigns tied to Russia, Pakistan blended fake engagement with real life

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Influence operations aren’t just about spreading fake news. International governments and corporate public relations firms also are using inauthentic social media behavior to boost attention around real-world events that fit into foreign policy goals, a panel of experts said Tuesday at CyberTalks, a summit presented by CyberScoop. The propaganda campaigns are increasingly layered, with a number of examples that have relied on contract workers who may not have realized they were involved in an astroturfing effort. In May, Facebook removed 30 pages, six groups, 83 accounts and 49 Instagram profiles that were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who had distributed food baskets to impoverished communities in Sudan. The amplification of pro-Russia content appeared to be designed to improve the populations’ impression of Prigozhin, and thus the Kremlin, at a time when Russia is trying to keep Russian warships stationed at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, according to […]

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With an eye on election interference, Facebook scrubs networks of phony Russian accounts

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Facebook on Thursday removed over 200 phony accounts and dozens of pages that originated in Russia and pumped out information on sensitive geopolitical issues targeting people from Turkey to the U.S. Facebook said it traced the fraudulent activity to either people connected with Russian military intelligence services or the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russia-based troll farm. It’s the latest in a series of actions that Facebook has taken against suspected foreign influence operations heading into the U.S. presidential election. “While we have not seen the networks we removed today…directly target the US 2020 election, they are linked to actors associated with election interference in the US in the past, including those involved in ‘DC leaks’ in 2016,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post. As with another suspected Russia-based influence operation that Facebook uncovered this month, the latest activity saw operatives pose as journalists or writers in an […]

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US sanctions Russian agent for 2020 election interference efforts, alleged IRA trolls

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The Trump administration sanctioned four Russia-linked individuals for their efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections, the Treasury Department announced Thursday. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is specifically sanctioning Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian politician who has been an “active Russian agent for over a decade,” for his efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections in the U.S., it said in a release. Derkach waged a covert influence campaign that relied on edited audio taps and other materials meant to discredit U.S. officials, and sway public opinion, prior to Election Day, according to the Treasury Department. “Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election,” OFAC said in the release. OFAC is also sanctioning three members of the Russian government’s social media troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, […]

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Russia’s IRA used phony news accounts on Facebook to discuss QAnon, coronavirus

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Russia’s troll farm again is trying to use Facebook to inflame divisions in the U.S. ahead of a presidential election. Facebook on Tuesday said it removed 13 accounts and two pages, which had 14,000 followers, affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization with a long history of using fake social media accounts to exploit political tension. The accounts impersonated independent news outlets to create discussions about the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden’s political candidacy and the right-wing conspiracy QAnon, among other topics. In some cases, IRA members posed as news editors to recruit freelance journalists to post content about contentious political topics. The IRA used an apparent news site called Peace Data, which published anti-Western articles with headlines like “UK Government Creates a Myth of a Migrant Crisis to Distract from Its Failures” and “The gold behind the French presence in Mali.” The Peace Data Facebook page is no […]

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Twitter removes nearly 6,000 accounts spreading Saudi-backed propaganda

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Twitter on Friday announced the removal of 5,929 accounts that researchers say has ties to a man accused of recruiting Twitter employees to gather information on Saudi dissidents. In a blog post, Twitter’s Site Integrity team revealed that the accounts removed this week operated as part of a “significant state-backed information operation” originating within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The accounts represent the “core” of a larger network of 88,000 accounts, and primarily were dedicated to liking, retweeting and replying to tweets that were favorable to the Saudi government on issues such as officials’ appearances in Western media and Iranian sanctions. Twitter attributed the activity to Smaat, a Saudi marketing firm that managed the accounts on behalf of its clients. “We have permanently suspended Smaat’s access to our service as a result, as well as the Twitter accounts of Smaat’s senior executives,” the company said in the blog post. “Smaat […]

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Russia’s GRU propped up fake media personas, mostly failed at social media promotion after DNC hack

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Russian military hackers who stole emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016 were only acting as one part of a larger, coordinated effort to spread Kremlin-approved messaging before and after the 2016 election, according to new findings from Stanford University. Stanford’s Internet Observatory on Tuesday released a trove of analysis detailing how the GRU, a Russian military intelligence unit, was unable to generate public interest in the data stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign for more than a month. Hackers first linked to the stolen emails in a June 14, 2016 set of Facebook posts, pointing to a set of messages supposedly leaked from the campaign. Facebook engagement to the DC Leaks Page, later attributed to Russia, totaled a mere 834 engagements over 22 posts published over four months. International attention only began when WikiLeaks tweeted a link to a database containing thousands of documents revealing internal strife in the […]

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