Russia reactivates its trolls and bots ahead of US midterm elections

Most of the posts slandered President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats, and were sometimes lewd.They also lamented the use of taxpayer money to support Ukraine In the war with the invading Russian army, the Ukrainian president was portrayed as a cartoon straight out of Russian propaganda.

The convergence of political concerns is no coincidence.

According to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future, the account was previously linked to a Russian secret agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency.

It’s part of a new, albeit narrower, effort in Russia identified by the group and other researchers ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. As before, the goal is to inflame conservative voters and undermine trust in the U.S. electoral system. This time, it also appears intent on sabotaging the Biden administration’s extensive military aid to Ukraine.

“Obviously, they’re trying to get them to cut off aid and funding to Ukraine,” said Alex Plisas, a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official who now works for business technology firm Providence Consulting Group .

The campaign — using the accounts of outraged Americans like Nora Burka — added momentum to the country’s most divisive political and cultural issues today.

It specifically targets Democratic candidates in the most closely contested races, including Senate seats in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, and calculates that Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House could help Russia’s war effort.

These activities show not only the vulnerability of the U.S. political system to foreign manipulation, but also how propagators of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by major social media platforms to remove or downplay false or deceptive content.

Last month, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a warning about the spread of “dark web media channels, online journals, messaging apps, deceptive websites, emails, text messages, and fake online personas.” Threat of false information. False information may include claims that voting data or results have been hacked or leaked.

The agencies urged people not to like, discuss or share posts from unknown or untrusted sources online. They did not identify specific efforts, but social media platforms and researchers tracking disinformation have recently uncovered various activities in Russia, China and Iran.

Recorded Future and two other social media research firms, Graphika and Mandiant, uncovered some activity in Russia that has turned to Gab, Parler, Getter and other new platforms that pride themselves on creating unmoderated spaces in the name of free speech.

These campaigns were much smaller compared to the 2016 election, in which inauthentic accounts reached millions of voters across the political spectrum. Facebook and other major platforms. The effort was equally harmful, the researchers said, because it could reach vulnerable users who could help achieve Russian goals.

“The audience is much smaller compared to other traditional social media networks,” said Brian Liston, senior intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, who identified the Nora Berka account. “But you can involve audiences in more targeted influence operations, because the people on these platforms are typically American conservatives who may be more receptive to conspiracy theories.”

Many of the accounts the researchers found were previously used by a news outlet that described itself as a citizen newsroom in the United States and Europe. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has previously linked the news outlet to a Russian information campaign centered on the internet research agency.

The network has since disbanded, with many of the social media accounts associated with it lying dormant after being publicly identified around the 2020 election. The accounts became active again in August and September, and were called to action like sleeper cells.

Liston said Nora Berka’s account on Gab had many characteristics of inauthentic users. There are no profile pictures or identifying biographical details. No one responded to messages sent to this account via Gab.

With more than 8,000 followers, the account specializes in posts about political issues — not just in one state, but across the country — and often spreads false or misleading posts. Most were barely involved, but a recent post about the FBI received 43 replies and 11 replies and was retweeted 64 times.

Since September, the account has repeatedly shared links to a previously unknown website, electiontruth.net, which Recorded Future says is almost certainly linked to the Russian election campaign.

Electiontruth.net’s earliest posts can only be dated September 5; since then, it has published articles almost daily mocking Biden and prominent Democratic candidates, while criticizing policies on race, crime and gender that it says are moving destroy America. “America Under Communism” is a typical title.

These articles have pseudonyms as bylines, such as Andrew J, Truth4Ever and Laura. According to Liston, the website domain was registered using a Bitcoin account.

For its contact information, electiontruth.net lists a cafe inside a converted gas station in Cotter, Arkansas, a town of 900 people on a bend in the White River. However, the cafe has since closed in favor of Cotter Bridge Market, a produce store and deli whose owners said they knew nothing about the site. No one from Election Truth responded to requests for comment submitted through the site.

Liston said the link to electiontruth.net appears to be closely related to accounts linked to Russians on Gab.

Cotter Bridge Market, Arkansas, on Nov. 5, 2022, at a coffee shop in Ark. listed as a contact for Electiontruth.net, an unknown site that posted mocking Biden Articles by the President and prominent Democratic candidates. (New York Times)

In another event, Graphika identified a series of comics that have recently appeared on Gab, Gettr, Parler and the discussion forum patriots.win. Created by an artist named “Schmitz,” the cartoons disparaged Democrats in the fiercest Senate and gubernatorial races.

Raphael Warnock, a Georgia senator who targeted black people, used racist themes. Another falsely claimed that Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan would release “all fentanyl dealers and drug dealers” from prison.

According to Graphika, the comics received little attention and didn’t go viral to other platforms.

A recurring theme in Russia’s new effort is that the U.S. under Biden is a waste of money in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to a Russian invasion that began in February.

For example, Nora Berka posted a doctored photo in September showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wearing a bikini and pole dancing, being slapped Biden showers with dollar bills.

“Joe Biden wants to spend another $13.7 billion in aid to Ukraine as working class America struggles to afford food, gasoline and baby formula,” the account posted. Not by chance, the post echoes a theme that has gained some traction among Republican lawmakers and voters questioning the delivery of weapons and other military aid.

“It’s no secret that Republicans — most of them — question whether we should support so-called foreign adventures or other people’s conflicts,” said Graham Brook, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab. It has also been tracking the operations of foreign influences.

The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not respond to requests for comment on Russia’s efforts. Brookie referred to the recovered accounts as “recidivism.” Gab did not respond to a request for comment.

As before, it may be difficult to gauge the exact impact of those accounts on voters on Tuesday. At the very least, they contributed to what Edward P. Perez, a board member of the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election security group, called “artificial chaos” in the nation’s political system.

He said that while Russians have tried in the past to build large followings for their inauthentic accounts on major platforms, today’s activity may be smaller but still have the desired effect — in part because divisions in American society have become Fertile soil for disinformation. .

“Since 2016, it seems that foreign countries can afford some of the burden,” said Perez, who has worked at Twitter, “because they have established such a sufficient division that there are many domestic players to take responsibility. They provide false information.”