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 14 min read
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"
Sep 17, 2018 16 tweets 10 min read
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.
Aug 25, 2018 61 tweets 23 min read
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
Aug 4, 2018 11 tweets 7 min read
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.
Aug 1, 2018 24 tweets 10 min read
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.
Jul 31, 2018 11 tweets 5 min read
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:
Jul 28, 2018 22 tweets 14 min read
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
Jul 20, 2018 25 tweets 10 min read
How the russian trolls collected profile pictures for their social media?
One of the russian ads released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Democrats sent people to imsanbernardino.info and had them upload a photo.
democrats-intelligence.house.gov/social-media-c… the domain name imsanbernardino.info used to be hosted by the same company that hosted 7-8 different domains including blackmattersus.com.
May 1, 2018 24 tweets 12 min read
let's go on a #bothunt
You can still find most of these #russian #bots yourself.
And they did retweet during the #UK general election for Labour leader #JeremyCorbyn
thetimes.co.uk/article/expose… some clues are the date ranges provided and the account types
Apr 2, 2018 21 tweets 11 min read
tagging everyone who might listen. please help me.
I MUST DESTROY THIS BOTNET.
I got curious about this claim. I can't say who runs them but a massive botnet DID used this hashtag.

washingtonpost.com/news/worldview… This is the same botnet that i have been tracking for weeks now. twitter suspended 20,000 of the bots and barely put a dent in them.
They are creating over 3500 accounts A DAY.
Mar 23, 2018 45 tweets 22 min read
Going to try to tweet this as I work through it. Someone out there doesn't like facebook. At least 3-4 different freshly minted botnets are retweeting anything with the #DeleteFacebook hashtag.
#Bot #TwitterBots the 1st "set" of bots is very similar to the elon musk cryptocurrency scammer bots that are running wild on twitter.
they are retweeting everything this account tweets:
Mar 16, 2018 32 tweets 13 min read
russian reddit accounts and links reddit.com/user/eye_josh/… via @reddit took me a few days to sort this out but this is the best way i could come up with to list all this information.
The accounts that posted links to known IRA "troll farm" websites are all connected to lots of other russian websites and accounts posted to reddit.
Feb 27, 2018 24 tweets 10 min read
Got curious and tried to locate a URL for being patriotic or patriotus last night.
Decided to go browse the DNS history URLs that pointed to Greenfloid Llc's IP ranges.
and this website caught my eye: southtexasnews[.]net Mostly because the list of russian or troll factory twitter handles congress got had a bunch of "news" twitter handles in it:
ElPasoTopNews
OnlineMemphis
MinneapolisON
KansasDailyNews
TodayBostonMA
PhiladelphiaON
DailyLosAngeles
HoustonTopNews
Oct 19, 2017 6 tweets 3 min read
Small thread about TEN_GOP, Pamela_Moore13, GopAaron88, and GopAaron. #TrumpRussiaCollusion TEN_GOP tweeted asking for people to follow GopAaron88 2.6.17 archive.is/e1a3H