'We are closer than you can imagine': how Russian trolls attack US veterans in social networks

The new report, based on Congressional intelligence, sheds light on the tricks that Russian trolls use to draw the attention of American veterans.

Фото: Depositphotos

New Republic. reports that a post appeared on some Instagram news feeds shortly before the 2016 election showing an unknown woman in black clothing crying over a metal box covered with an American flag at an airport.

“Hillary Clinton will never understand what it's like to lose someone you love for your country,” the headline begins. — Respect the high price that many families pay to protect our freedom. Buy a T-shirt and help a veteran.”

The post was a fairly standard sponsored post on the popular Instagram account American.veterans, targeting members of the online groups United States Army Reserve, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Concerned Veterans for America, and the American Sniper fan page. The clothing sales were very real, but the post was not created by a veteran—at least not by a United States veteran. The account that posted it was controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency; For just over 3000 rubles (about $50), his “Killary” post was shared among 18 Instagram users, mostly veterans; at least 000 people clicked on a third-party site selling MilVet clothing.

“Who profited from the sale of MilVet merchandise in any of these cases is also unknown,” investigators now say, although it is not hard to imagine who profited from the political message of the post.

This was just one of thousands of politically significant social media posts directed by foreign actors at military veterans, according to a new 191-page investigation report published by US Vietnam Veterans (VVA). And instead of shrinking after the 2016 election of the year, such publications continue to spread.

On the subject: Time: Russian trolls changed their tactics in the US on the eve of the 2020 election of the year

“Prominent Russian propaganda and politically divisive content targeting military personnel and veterans is distributed by administrators in at least 30 foreign countries, concentrated in Eastern Europe and Vietnam,” VVA chief investigator Christopher Goldsmith wrote in a summary version of the report.

Based on requests initiated by the Permanent Selection Committee of the House of Representatives for Intelligence, this report also details that an Internet account claiming to be an ISIS wing called Cyber ​​Caliphate turned out to be Russian. Under the guise of an Islamist terrorist group, the Russian account sent a series of threats to the wives of the military: “We know everything about you, your husband and your children, and we are much closer than you can imagine.”

Mission accomplished: messages triggered a series of alarmist national news.

“Online threat to army wife: ISIS is coming for you,” was one Fox News headline.

Large veteran organizations spend a lot of time protecting their members from fraudulent activities; such was the online troll tracking project in VVA. Goldsmith began by tracking Facebook imposter groups, including the very popular fake VVA page, which was launched not from Washington but from Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

“The page spread fake news—changing the dates of real stories, sensationalizing others with obvious exaggeration—on issues closely related to this particular population,” he writes. During his research, he also discovered that until last month, Macedonian administrators ran the Vets for Trump page, which had 131 members.

In addition to a series of hundreds of fake posts, the report details how veteran-oriented dating services on social networks actually turned out to be Ukrainian phishing accounts; some foreign Facebook accounts “left automatic comments on each other's posts” to create engagement; and various Twitter and Facebook accounts sent veterans to malware distribution points or offered nude images of veterans to other users.

For servicemen abroad, the attractiveness of the Internet is obvious: it is an easy channel to learn about the domestic news of the country and communicate on different continents. The VVA report provides a list of proposed policy fixes, including the creation of a secretary position in charge of Internet infrastructure and security. He also calls on the Department of State to promote “anti-cybercrime laws abroad” to limit the spread of propaganda.

On the subject: Russian accused of interfering in US elections, spoke about the 'troll factory'

During the 20 century, as radio and television communications spread, several countries developed agreements to limit interstate propaganda, although only a few have ever been applied. America’s only semi-serious approach to this work was related to the adoption of the Smith-Mundt Act in the 1948 year, which limited the government’s ability to propagate against its people (this law was actually repealed in the 2012 year).

The dilemma is that the new US administration may require some positive action. In the absence of such an action, the 2020 election of the year will be held on the battlefield, where veterans and military personnel are largely defenseless.

Goldsmith, for his part, hopes that Facebook and the feds will take his report into account and take action before that.

“I would like the FBI to take this report and follow the trail to find the bad guys,” he said. - This is not my job. I should be worried about health care and education benefits for veterans, not the cybersecurity of American elections.”

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