Josh Russell Profile picture
Tweets about Russian trolls, Twitter bots, disinfo, hoaxes, and internet stuff. Featured on @CNN, @BBC, @NPR, @NBC Bylines @thedailybeast

Oct 5, 2018, 24 tweets

The flow of russian disinformation, and how russian cyber warfare works:

GRU hacks, russian media writes about it, russian bots take to twitter.

The bots I am looking at tweeted about "Cyber Berkut".

ncsc.gov.uk/news/reckless-…

GCHQ attributes Cyber Berkut to GRU.

In just what happened to be an odd coincidence I happened to be looking at russian bots when @rob_barry did a thread about "CyberCaliphate"

At some point in march 2014 after the russian invasion of crimea GRU setup Cyber Berkut and started attacking various Ukrainian infrastructure and websites.
motherjones.com/politics/2014/…

RT runs a stroy about it:
rt.com/news/nato-webs…

then the twitter bots step in, 2000+ of them.

"We have hacked correspondence of #US Army Attache Assistant in #Kiev and discover a plot against #Ukraine"

"Here is the proof that Ukrainian revolution financed by US #CyberBerkut #Ukraine #antimaidan #revolution "

more information about CyberBerkut here

Russian propaganda machine claims US covertly testing chemical warfare in Ukraine:
toinformistoinfluence.com/2017/08/26/rus…

.@ThreatConnect did a decent write up of their spearphishing attacks on @bellingcat's @AricToler and @EliotHiggins

threatconnect.com/blog/russia-ha…

those bot were setup to boost what look like russian troll accounts.
@nocensnews
they didn't like @SenJohnMcCain

Ukrainian livejournal trolls were most of what the accounts did on the list of 3700 accounts twitter gave congress.

This accounts facebook page was removed by facebook

facebook.com/nocensnews

haha they didn't like @bellingcat much either.

US Department of State cites incompetent sources:
g-shufrich.livejournal.com/11827.html

An archive of the @cyberberkut1 twitter handle shows that facebook page as well.

another what looks to be a russian troll account they boosted: @pauw_p

"his" facebook is banned as well.
facebook.com/brent.depauw.1…

probably russian @freeukraineanon

definitely a russian troll account:

@linnik_l
Независимый журналист, блогер #Украина #Харьков #ДНР #ЛНР #ХНР #Новороссия #SaveDonbasPeople

how do I know for a fact these are russian trolls?

this is what the average account looked like on the list of russian twitter handles congress got:

what do the bots look like?

very familiar

i have tweeted about this botnet many times before.

in fact i just gave twitter 5,000 of them to suspend

this botnet is the glue that holds all the other russian bots together.

those bots followed these 300 russian accounts

they follow these arab bots

they followed the mexican bots

they followed these now confirmed russian bots.

they followed these bots, now suspended

and they followed these bots

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