“Russia Today,” or RT as it was rebranded several years ago, has long been a state-run news outlet meant to support and advance Russian government interests. But prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was nevertheless welcome in much of the rest of the world. When that changed, the outlet immediately turned to disinformation campaigns on social media supported by a bot farm designed to register and create fake accounts and generate posts based on Kremlin talking points.
The Justice Department says that it has taken down this bot farm, seizing two domain names used to generate email addresses for registering social media accounts. It has also seized 968 X accounts used to spread these posts, and says that X has voluntarily suspended many more that were affiliated with the bot farm.
Disinformation posts on X targeted multiple countries, expansion to Meta services was planned
The two US-registered domain names were seized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The bot farm drew on these to create email addresses that were then used to create X (then Twitter) accounts in a process that appears to have been largely automated.
But the process goes beyond merely defeating Twitter spam checks with automated methods. The tool the Russian operators used, “Meliorator,” also created fake profiles with generated profile pictures and details meant to represent an average organic US-based platform user. These fake accounts would then post and retweet content supporting Kremlin talking points.
While it sounds like an impressive disinformation campaign, the screenshots the Justice Department shared indicate that these accounts were not picking up any sort of traction (struggling to reach 20 followers each). The hackers had reportedly planned to expand the bot farm operation to target Facebook and Instagram, though they will likely have to regroup at this point.Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center indicates that Russian intelligence may instead be focusing their disinformation efforts on Telegram for the present election season.
Bot farm grew out of 2022 RT bans
The bot farm began as a project of RT after it was banned from broadcast in the US and UK in 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine. An unnamed deputy-in-chief at the news network was the head of the disinformation project through 2022, and in 2023 it received fresh funding from the government and the appointment of a FSB intelligence officer to oversee it.
As has been a hallmark of RT for its history of operation in foreign countries, the disinformation campaign focused on pushing conspiracy theories that discredit the US and oppositional powers in the EU. Many of the social media accounts that were generated claimed to be “anti-NWO,” and some posts focused on the idea of Putin making war on a generalized “NWO” conspiracy with his invasions of other countries.
While this particular disinformation campaign may have been a bust, security experts note that activity has been slow thus far for a US election year and the serious efforts from Russia and other nations are still to come.
