Russian Trolling

A client recently dismissed Russian activity on Twitter and other social media as ‘Russian Trolls’. As much as I understand where he is coming from, he is wrong – dangerously wrong. The Russians are playing a much bigger game and we need to pay attention.

My client was thinking of several recent media reports. Russia has created a modern cyber-sweat shop that writes media articles that favour the Russian government, or promotes something they support. There was a story about a factory fire in Central City, Louisiana – except there is no such factory, and no such place. Then there was the report about French support for ISIS. That report made it onto CNN before it was discredited.

A reporter backtracked the Twitter and social media accounts and discovered they were linked to Russian ‘businessmen’ and pro-Russian supporters. The accounts were carefully set up so a report in one place would be automatically repeated by other accounts, and suddenly there is a ‘trend’ and the ‘report’ is picked up as news. Cyber security researchers have documented malware that adds ‘hits’ or ‘views’ to pro-Russian videos on YouTube. When computers get infected with the malware, the malware generates ‘views’ the viewer count goes up and suddenly there is a ‘trend’.

When we dismiss this activity as ‘Russian Trolls’, we are forgetting that Russia has produced brilliant mathematicians, composers, chess masters, philosophers and strategic thinkers. In 2005, Timothy L. Thomas published a book called Cyber Silhouettes, which documented Russian strategic thinking on cyber-space and planning for their future cyber warfare. Russia was planning how to shape and direct information on the Internet in the 1990s – before the internet as we know it had fully taken form.

If you are a hacker, where can you go and be safe from prosecution? Russia has encouraged this technological subterfuge by creating a safe haven for hackers. Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia was the best advertising possible. As long as you don’t hack Russia or Russians, all hackers know they have sanctuary in Russia. So in addition to their own considerable talent, Russia is the de facto safe home for hackers. That ensures a stream of exploits and creative nastiness that the Russian oligarchy can tap into.

I don’t think we know what Russia’s cyber capabilities are. The Republic of Georgia and Ukraine had different types of cyber-attacks that crippled parts of their Internet, assisting Russia in occupying their territory. Estonia and Poland have both received cyber ‘warnings’, massive distributed denial of service attacks, when they did something Russia didn’t like. Now add the ‘Troll’ social media accounts spreading false media reports, the various cyber-criminal activities (cyber-theft from banks, companies and individuals) and then there is Russia’s cyber-espionage. That is a disturbing amount of malevolent cyber-capability.

To a former KGB Officer, meaning President Putin, that means he has more tools he can use. And he has used those tools. This means he will probably (amost certainly) use them again. Russian Trolls? Maybe. Maybe the Trolls are far smarter than we have given them credit for.