Russian farms linked to the Kremlin are running disinfection campaigns aimed at disrupting this year’s presidential election in the US, and according to Microsoft, they are focusing their efforts on getting rid of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The company published a new report detailing the movements of two farms monitored by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.
These Kremlin-backed actors apparently struggled to find the right path shortly after President Biden resigned, but in late August and early September, one of them began circulating fake videos that generated millions of views. One video showed alleged attacks by Harris supporters on Trump rally attendees. Another video used the actor to accuse Harris of involvement in the 2011 high-profile incident that left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed. The second video, which went viral, was released by an older website posing as a San Francisco news site.
Meanwhile, a second troll farm stopped producing content about the 2024 Paris Olympics and began creating videos that disparaged Harris. Another fake video showed a New York City billboard claiming Harris wanted to change the sex of children. It was first published on Telegram, before being shared on X and receiving over 100,000 views in just a few hours.
Microsoft has warned that people should expect more Russian-made anti-virus material, including more staged and AI-edited videos, to surface online as we approach the election. Earlier this month, the US government indicted two employees of the Russian news agency RT, accusing them of planning to pay a Tennessee company $10 million to distribute 2,000 hoax videos on social media. The Treasury Department also authorized ANO Dialog, a Russian nonprofit allegedly involved in the campaign known as “Doppelganger,” to create fake websites that would appear to American readers as legitimate major news sites. Microsoft said in its new report that it has suspended more than 20 accounts linked to ANO Dialog.
Meta recently banned RT and other Russian state news channels for “international interference.” According to its notes, which the company shared with Engadget, it has seen Russian state-controlled media try to interfere with foreign governments and avoid detection in the past. It said it expects them to continue to try to “engage in deceptive influence efforts across the Internet.”
Russia is not the only one trying to influence the outcome of this year’s US presidential election. Microsoft, Google and the feds published reports in August that Iranian hackers were trying to hack several advisers to the Biden-Harris and Trump campaigns. Microsoft has also discovered US lobbying campaigns by groups linked to the Iranian government. One such group created a website that attacks and defames former President Donald Trump.
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