Josh Russell Profile picture
Oct 5, 2018 24 tweets 14 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
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 followed these now confirmed russian bots.

they followed these bots, now suspended

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More from @josh_emerson

Sep 17, 2018
There is definitely something going on.
If you look around twitter there are some very "odd" accounts.

#Macedonia #RussianMeddling #Russia #Skopje
apnews.com/b51d832612784b…
These tweets seem weird to me.
One uses a #QAnon hashtag.
Read 16 tweets
Aug 25, 2018
There are more of these thread.

Suspected Iranian Influence Operation Leverages Network of Inauthentic
News Sites & Social Media Targeting Audiences in U.S., UK, Latin
America, Middle East
fireeye.com/blog/threat-re…
we got 9 urls from FireEye's report.
and I had flagged another 13 back in march.

Mostly due to these reddit users:
/u/Mike_Rubin
/u/AllenDono
/u/finalin
/u/KevanKing
/u/Pazaj
/u/erickiskandar
Most of these sites share OR shared a common host at some point in time.
AS24940 hetzner[.]com
Read 61 tweets
Aug 4, 2018
Quick thread about a small set of bots I ran into this morning. Every once in a while I randomly check the @SecureDemocracy dashboard it's usually the same things. Today #WeAreCorbyn popped up. Figured I would check it out. #Botspot #Russia #KremlinTrolls
Tweeting this kinda as I go.
1st thing pull data on the hashtag.
visual studio code, python, and tweepy.
I only pulled about 40k tweets, not that many.
next step is to crack open that .csv file and remove all the duplicate accounts leaving only one row per account.
Then start sorting. IF there is a pattern you will notice it almost immediately.

Here 16 accounts show up with the same stats, sorted by tweet source. Bots.
Read 11 tweets
Aug 1, 2018
From the Senate Intelligence hearing on social media and foreign influence
intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…
websites they linked to:
some of these are new.
.ihavethetruth.com was for sure russian
securitytrails.com/domain/ihaveth…
It sat on a Choopa, LLC's server before being moved to cloudflare
Read 24 tweets
Jul 31, 2018
We have asked every social media platform for months now to take action @Reddit, @facebook, @Twitter will only do something after someone gets killed.

Michael Avenatti Targeted in Person by QAnon, the Crazy Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory thebea.st/2M3HFig?source… via @thedailybeast
Facebook right now:
Reddit:
Read 11 tweets
Jul 28, 2018
ad number 1514
page Don't shoot linking to this bit.ly url
twitter.com/hawamerborsa
website has a facebook, youtube, and twitter account.
Colin Kaepernick's camp
Ad Number 2811
ad 3100
WiIliamsandKalvin advertising /officialblackgunsmatter.com

twitter.com/majtoure

archive.is/1tIge
Read 22 tweets

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