RUSSIAN HACK cont'd
James Andrew Lewis, Senior Vice President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explains that “Russia is a haven for the most advanced cybercrime groups and no clear line delineates the criminal world from the government. The Kremlin sees Russian cybercriminals as a strategic asset, and one of the most difficult problems for reducing cybercrime is that Russia, along with North Korea, will not cooperate with Western law enforcement. High-end cybercriminal groups in Russia have hacking capabilities that are better than most nations for both criminal and intelligence purposes." Read his statement here.
On January 6, 2017, the U.S. intelligence agencies released a report called Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections." Read the full report here. The report included analytic assessments drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency regarding "the motivation and scope of Moscow’s intentions regarding U.S. elections and Moscow’s use of cyber tools and media campaigns to influence U.S. public opinion."
Their key judgements: (1) Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations. (2) Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. (3) Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. (4) Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations — such as cyber activity — with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
A year later, then Director of National Intelligence — and, as such, the leader of the United States’ 17 intelligence agencies — Dan Coats confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that “the United States is under attack” and that Russia is attempting to “degrade our democratic values and weaken our alliances.”
Director Coats also warned that the intelligence agencies “expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States.” Months later, Coats continued to warn that “the warning lights are blinking red again. Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”
Then National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “incontrovertible.”
According to a 37-page federal indictment of thirteen Russian nationals issued by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, leading to the 2016 presidential election the Russians stole Americans' identities, created fake drivers' licenses, bank accounts, and PayPal accounts in the names of fictitious Americans, faked social media accounts, created and distributed inflammatory digital ads and images, organized political rallies on U.S. soil, and even had two operatives on the ground in America. The pair traveled to at least nine states posing as tourists to gather information for their bosses back in Russia. Read the entire indictment here. The indictment mentions Facebook and Instagram 41 times. Facebook finally admitted that divisive, Russian-placed political content reached 146 million Americans on their platform alone. Read more about the responsibility of social media platforms here.
When the infamous Mueller report was finally released to the public in April 2019 it was clear from the very beginning: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It continues, "The Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out the earliest Russian interference operations identified by the investigation-a social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States."...the Office determined that Russia's two principal interference operations in the 2016 U.S. presidential election — the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations — violated U.S. criminal law."
In July 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that revealed all fifty states were targeted by Russia in 2016. The report says that "The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level.” Although the Committee "has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting machines were manipulated...Russia may have been probing vulnerabilities in voting systems to exploit later."
Further, "Russian efforts exploited the seams between federal authorities and capabilities, and protections for the states. The U.S. intelligence apparatus is, by design, foreign-facing, with limited domestic cybersecurity authorities except where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can work with state and local partners. State election officials, who have primacy in running elections, were not sufficiently warned or prepared to handle an attack from a hostile nation-state actor." Read the report here.
In August 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its final report (the fifth in a series) regarding 2016 Russian election interference. The report, which totals almost 1,000 pages and includes information from over a million documents and 200 interviews, confirms that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”
The report continues, “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president.”
The report also confirms that Konstantin Kilimnik — a close business associate of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s original campaign chairman — was indeed a Russian intelligence officer, and that Donald Trump’s campaign accepted help from Russians who were trying to get him elected. To that end, the campaign provided Russians with polling data and coordinated the leak of stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Two other studies clarify even further how Russia exploited data provided by social media firms.
The first, from the University of Oxford and Graphika, found that "Between 2013 and 2018, the Russian Internet Research Agency's (IRA) Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached tens of millions of users in the United States; over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA’s Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way; peaks in advertising and organic activity often correspond to important dates in the U.S. political calendar, crises, and international events; IRA activities focused on the U.S. began on Twitter in 2013 but quickly evolved into a multi-platform strategy involving Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among other platforms; and the most far reaching IRA activity is in organic posting, not advertisements."
Further, "Russia’s IRA activities were designed to polarize the U.S. public and interfere in elections by: campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016, and more recently for Mexican American and Hispanic voters to distrust U.S. institutions; encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational; and spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum."
"The analysis found that between 2013 and 2018, the Russian Internet Research Agency’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached tens of millions of users in the United States; over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA’s Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way; peaks in advertising and organic activity often correspond to important dates in the U.S. political calendar, crises, and international events; IRA activities focused on the U.S. began on Twitter in 2013 but quickly evolved into a multi-platform strategy involving Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among other platforms; and the most far reaching IRA activity is in organic posting, not advertisements."
"Surprisingly, these campaigns did not stop once Russia’s IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues, national security issues, and issues pertinent to younger voters. The highest peak of IRA ad volume on Facebook is in April 2017 — the month of the Syrian missile strike, the use of the Mother of All Bombs on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan, and the release of the tax reform plan; IRA posts on Instagram and Facebook increased substantially after the election, with Instagram seeing the greatest increase in IRA activity; the IRA accounts actively engaged with disinformation and practices common to Russian “trolling.” Some posts referred to Russian troll factories that flooded online conversations with posts, others denied being Russian trolls, and some even complained about the platforms’ alleged political biases when they faced account suspension." Read the report here.
Indeed, Mueller’s 37-page federal indictment mentions Facebook and Instagram 41 times. Facebook finally admitted that divisive, Russian-placed political content reached 146 million Americans on their platform alone.
The second study, from New Knowledge, revealed in part the following: "The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets; the IRA created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem; the IRA exploited the trust of their Page audiences to develop human assets, at least some of whom were not aware of the role they played. This tactic was substantially more pronounced on Black-targeted accounts; the degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content."
The report continues, "Despite statements from Twitter and Facebook debating whether it was possible to gauge whether voter suppression content was present, there were three primary variants of specific voter suppression narratives spread on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube: Malicious misdirection (Twitter-based text-to-vote scams, tweets designed to create confusion about voting rules); Candidate support redirection (‘vote for a 3rd party!’); and Turnout depression (‘stay home on Election Day, your vote doesn’t matter’). Read the report here.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump didn't seem too concerned about this information — which is really, really dangerous for this country. Regardless of the part he and/or his campaign did — or did not — play in these atrocities, it is critical that our leaders acknowledge the serious threat that a foreign power interfering in American elections poses to our national security.
The mere appearance that Russia got away with this puts this country at remarkable risk on several levels. We must make absolutely certain that Russia is not only stopped but severely punished — to both save our democracy from outside influence and to send a crystal clear message to China, Iran, North Korea and other potential attackers that this behavior will not be tolerated in any fashion.
The 2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community expected "Russia will conduct bolder and more disruptive cyber operations during the next year, most likely using new capabilities against Ukraine. The Russian Government is likely to build on the wide range of operations it is already conducting, including disruption of Ukrainian energy distribution networks, hack-and-leak influence operations, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and false flag operations. In the next year, Russian intelligence and security services will continue to probe U.S. and allied critical infrastructures, as well as target the United States, NATO, and allies for insights into U.S. policy."
"We assess that the Russian intelligence services will continue their efforts to disseminate false information via Russian state-controlled media and covert online personas about U.S. activities to encourage anti-U.S. political views. Moscow seeks to create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-U.S. political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions. Foreign elections are critical inflection points that offer opportunities for Russia to advance its interests both overtly and covertly. At a minimum, we expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople, and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States." Read the entire report here.
Unfortunately, 2019's Assessment was not much better:
"Our adversaries and strategic competitors will increasingly use cyber capabilities – including cyber espionage, attack, and influence — to seek political, economic, and military advantage over the United States and its allies and partners. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways — to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure. At present, China and Russia pose the greatest espionage and cyberattack threats, but we anticipate that all our adversaries and strategic competitors will increasingly build and integrate cyber espionage, attack, and influence capabilities into their efforts to influence U.S. policies and advance their own national security interests. In the last decade, our adversaries and strategic competitors have developed and experimented with a growing capability to shape and alter the information and systems on which we rely. For years, they have conducted cyber espionage to collect intelligence and targeted our critical infrastructure to hold it at risk. They are now becoming more adept at using social media to alter how we think, behave, and decide. As we connect and integrate billions of new digital devices into our lives and business processes, adversaries and strategic competitors almost certainly will gain greater insight into and access to our protected information." Read the report here.
The report continues: "Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians. Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits — such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and leak operations, or manipulating data — in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions, and elections."