Russian Meddling: Indictments and Troll Farms

The indictment by the Mueller special counsel investigation into the meddling by Russia into the election cycle last year is just another nail in the coffin on the conclusion that there was no action by the Russians to affect the election cycle in favor of Trump. Though many still have their cognitive dissonance helmets on full, the reality even struck into the White House with Trump tweeting out that there was actually meddling, no collusion, but meddling. So this indictment has shown it’s potential power on the whole case but I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the Troll farm and it’s KGB ties before we ever heard about it as a general populace post 2016.

Point of fact is that in 2015 Adrian Chen wrote about the Troll farm as it was still carrying out attacks on Russia’s other pressing enemy, Ukraine. People seem to have forgotten with all of the talk about the farm in 2016, that the Russian propaganda and PSYOPS machine was actively working for Putin in support of his agenda against Ukraine and it is this fact and how they operated then that should be addressed and shown how they evolved to today’s hybrid warfare tip of the spear.

Back in 2015 the nascent troll farm was active in trying to spin stories about Ukrainian ologarchs and their activities as counter to Russia. One particular story line took place after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition candidate to Putin and a progressive in Russia. A reporter for a Russian news service did a story on the Troll Farm and actually managed to gather their documentation including opposition research (internet research) which later would be the name they would take up as IRA right? Anyway, within that cache of documents you have papers with links on things like the Middle East and other areas with ideas on how you could attack them politically with posts like the above on Nemtsov’s being killed not by Putin, but instead by those nasty Ukrainians.

It is informative to look at the postings and the nick names that were being used by the early IRA as opposed to what they have used in 2016 and still use today. In early days they did not really try to insert themselves so well into the public space as being citizens of the areas they were talking about, in fact, most of the names have English connotations  and not Russian at all. So by looking at the users and their posts (livejournal for instance) show’s you what it was like in 2015 spinning up and learning. There may have been just as many Twitter accounts but for the most part they were using Livejournal, which makes sense because at the point this was going on, Russia had bought Livejournal…(I left LJ when they did)

No. П / П	THE CHANGE OF KAZAKABBAEV TATYANA	CHANGE OF LEBEDYANTSEVA OLGA
1 2	mazurov_89 braille_teeth	vehofunzi qitsen
3	koka-kola23	raphahunthig
4	lipyf837	panebcaj
5	vince-crane	tergparriotio
6th	ya_karnavalova	lihohor
7th	nannik-dr	sojaan884
8	Rezites	cypetcompbis
9	konorlaoo04	destforkowoo
10	qkempek	nouglysv
eleven	caradoxee5	petraffilya
12	ynuka	Backlashealthma
13	natalex84	amenem
14	anna_02051990	paintbellu
15	mrokiralex	iugegeizh
16	annetjohnson	pexirgarnez
17th	rghkride	chicocali
18	gkohio	pexirub
19	karber861	kmfemovmpxxx
20	innyla92	lojtautome
21	cotedo	inkiptiruc
22	Smurfetka-24	palecefaz
23	raikbowee1	hhlayz
24	ohvis134	ningcotedin
25	demouu1	olginarkew
26th	nofk452	renfidebun
27th	alexander7171	portlandam
28	vadro	olga_lebedyan
29	makgxiewua	andriudruz
thirty	mofan926	unmolarlay
31	smspudilj	repaw968
32	varkhotel	stepalexos
33	shtots	prasingyy55
34	rijbc	steltertheeness
35	wylwurwolv	spinrarata
36	workroman	ddesesexla
37	pheyeroo57	antaauu4
38	tritonst	wihhie917
39	milka_e20	pagkagezmeat
40	codirips814	werhellvolkfu
41	lorislaley	tiopretytcur
42	eekim81	aladorzam
43	oftibar	nyntynuriu
44	elegmhehov	begtotenlu
45	aple_at_the_tab	abezhiu
46	Nikolaabil	oxyitt
47	hey_son1c	rabrukywiz
48	firyupa	snowdidsmomuds
49	asus	paradana
50	Symatvei	durenhuntpi
51	xamit251	sixfeevae
52	farpodmuu07	nebozuanrou
53	oloviit	procomdn
54	diuu085	kovikotuss
55	alenkujl	urigcon211
56	rcrims	peosaytranos
57	snoop83	borgperwensgod
58	vynal	rhealaltrades
59	sportto	nishihatu
60	danybody	asafasngut
61	alexmosyan	cophetycoo
62	poragpalkhe	merzasarsgepf
63	sergalyev839	promvogtsigold
64	vadim_spx	pesina20k
65	rus-policy	vuhyzowi
66	wafyy248	skewerilgraph
67	katerina2703	wladmancornnes
68	dragon_uz	feedpecosleft
69	Winter-kinder	prosorouqu
70	Pjobynrutri	frantirigesch
71	green_margo	cirgadisla
72	ptirenw	precalacov
73	pastogross	zlavaq037
74	igerenbart	hrilepswia
75	mskilys	szehdes
76	pantyyy08	bestthecalpa
77	thepicard	lasorpprogso
78	igtego	classatopos
79	paqurni	zipkingfilci
80	emory6townsend	preaphoubowo
81	aspera76	geoversive
82	zymecs	gingsenpirem
83	001usa	tes40uvir
84	ca119idia	judj747
85	fadaqpm	throwenelan
86	pybden	sfouninmire
87	Protsyon	diotradconpe
88	phidiwp507	llanpaclaive
89	makabu	neytilmigers
90	osobroim	glyzitneko
91	yuliya_korshyn	metcentlighrou
92	Parabellum50	bentakiffo
93	policyrus	pqalongese
94	tuyqer898	chaicoffskaya
95	aljin	cenhoufimou
96	rammathets	siohuntired
97	overtimorouq	feascoacoca
98	overtimorouq	prozaet
99	ntnwoc	inga
100	stranamasterov	glycmamortga
101	ktoroj14	imclasfulte
102	Yohohoguy	izorylie646
103	pbijipsfem	lighwinsbrachig
104	wyazfunovv	mafomeri
105	ariol921	oryanhuazo
106	mariya-789	kfuu0
107	roavrumper	daytrolchildcha
108	kyxapka	odassaflot
109	ryypaulinm	tamred1
110	jang033	paca979
111	wwwevgemie	vollatasklu
112	p01t11	legahedddis
113	pohezvitie	othoee111
114	zhakim755	trugleyscorun
115	Asswalker	ybdocegesch
116	vvp2014	rpmuntar
117	to12scorta	nahezuu91
118	Spicemachine	socompdanfi
119	nastia642	beadeadsdentfi
120	nungsorivat	pia986
121	homyr657e	pzsg
122	orlenrenosr	pdachee
123	kalininkhu	paschig
124	parydaq070	plimtintaza
125	enot_kot	ptimenalhook
126	abfyr890	Ladushki2014
127	vamiqyy63	photographereye
128	evgenyashm	balyk2014
129	palfemine	polza1985
130	tay-zakulisnay1	polina_i_liza
131	radbec	gymbreaker
132	revivaldude	strelach
133	cykularj	tolstunovich
134	ageev013	demosfen-en
135	porkimes	Ikehujaik
136	owwaxde082	nersis
137	andrei-kovrin	IvanichKem
138	pasioda	BVDfan
139	fooqbal951	bookworm-war
140	nugotvapi	nina_zlova
141	swull786
142	nina_istomina
143	gig180
144	raokabea
145	synbmulty
146	beloham848
147	lissa-marioko
148	kater971
149	peflirz
150	hikonozauu00
151	hikonozauu00
152	michael_jd
153	uglycoyotespb
154	urajr
155	bobzan
156	peulgieness
157	scavamerzl
158	levyshkinr
159	pavetbrer
160	ddanii33
161	goodrus
162	supersonicwall
163	mannaliobrit
164	pierii01
165	panbiran
166	georgi-grusha
167	pashka208
168	vmoffee179
169	etopiterdetka99
170	jenyamelika
171	anya_rocket
172	snowy_trail
173	malkovich_i
174	samiyymniy
175	chadimi
176	kvazarion
177	Nestero85
178	nika_anisina
179	savoiyar
180	oksadoxa
181	mercymt

Most of these you have to look up with the Wayback Machine and you will notice that a lot of them were one off posts and that was it. Just sowing the ground for the infowar and then linking that post around. For Ukraine and anyone who has been paying attention, the PSYOPS and Hybrid War has been ongoing for many years so this is nothing new. For the US, well, the general populace that is, they hadn’t a clue I guess but I wanted to get across to you that what they pulled off in the US wasn’t new, it was just the next evolution of what they have been doing all along elsewhere. It was the magic of ubiquitous social media and a really polarized political landscape that made it work so well in 2016.

So with this indictment we can peek further under the hood of the hybrid information war against the US election process. It seems that this all kind of was being at least thought about in 2013 when Putin was pissed off with Clinton about his own elections and some of what later came out in the cables that were dumped by Wikileaks. By 2014 the notion of hybrid warfare had been put out by the Gerasimov and Russia was starting to plan. The creation of the Troll Farm I personally think was a part of the Gerasimov doctrine’s modus operandi that the SVR/GRU and Putin decided to create for this purpose and furthermore that the first fledgling attacks were the prelude to what would come in 2016. Certainly by 2015 they were spinning up and already had assets in place in the US gathering intel and creating the baselines for the attacks.

Truly this was a hybrid form of warfare using human assets and technical ones to carry off the plan. This wasn’t just some one off fly by night operation, they invested a lot of time and money getting assets in country (US) to collect data and to add to the planning stages. They then went as far to hire out servers in the US and create VPN’s to make it look as though their troll armies were actually here in the states. Add to this the fact that they also used carding sites to create users and bank accounts to fund the operations also speaks to the sophistication of the operation.

This wasn’t dedushka’s propaganda operation!

So what does all this mean other than it is an entertaining diversion for those who want to go down the rabbit hole OSINT wise? Well, it shows that the Russian plan was larger than one might have thought, more effective than some still think, and was but one component of a larger operation. That last bit is key for me to get across to you all. Of late I have been seeing reports online since the indictments came out that said the campaign really did not affect the election and this is poppycock. This was just a part of the larger whole and to take this module of the whole plan and separate it out to say nothing happened, is idiotic.

Though the President and the Russian operations still ongoing would like you to believe this is the case, it is a falsehood. In tandem with the hacking and the leaks, the Russians most definitely affected the voting by the populace. In fact, when information starts to come out about how Analytica data targeting very specific groups and regions comes to light you will see just how much the whole is the sum of the parts and the synergy was leveraged. This was no simple hack and dump of data, there were psychologists and social scientists involved as well as technicians and hackers.

This indictment just sets the stage for more to come my friends… And seeing Donny squirm and rage has been amusing.

More will come. For now though, do read the aricle and look at all the docs in the Google docs dump there.

Dos va donya

K.

UPDATE: I am going through the metadata of the files from the Google drive and I have found a document that comes from a .mil address (function.mil.ru) and this document (Nightly TK of 06.01) gives direction on post keywords and writing direction for content.

Ночное ТЗ от 06.01

It was created 1/26/2015 by “user”

You can now see a military connection to the Troll farm.