Twitter suspends Guccifer and DCLeaks after Mueller links them to the Russian hacking operation



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Twitter suspended two accounts Saturday that special advocate Robert S. Mueller III linked to a Russian intelligence operation to disrupt the 2016 US presidential election.

Suspensions come after a dozen Russian intelligence officials were indicted Friday by the US Department of Justice, accused of hacking the computers of Democrats and used fake characters online to distribute the stolen material . The indictments also highlight how social media platforms played a vital role in the Russian misinformation campaign and how technology companies are trying to prevent abuses on their mbadive networks.

The Mueller investigation revealed that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks intelligence agents to launder pirated information. The conspirators used Twitter and other social media platforms to try to influence US voters, according to the indictment. He links Twitter accounts @dcleaks_ and @ Guccifer_2 to other harmful activities in the Russian operation, citing a common networking tool and a bitcoin address related to Russian hacking and misinformation efforts.

[Trump casts doubt on U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in 2016 election]

In a statement released on Monday, a Twitter spokesman said: Accounts have been suspended for being connected to a network of accounts previously suspended for acting in violation of our policies. "Twitter did not develop the accounts suspended earlier and did not say why Guccifer and DCLeaks were not suspended earlier."

A major US intelligence report released Last year, officials said that the Russian military intelligence service, known as GRU, used the character of Guccifer and two websites to publish material that was hacked by the Democrats. cybersecurity experts have claimed that piracy of the computer systems of the Democrats was perpetrated by Russian opponents Guccifer's character denied the allegation

Twitter reacted to the growing pressure to rid its platform of False and suspicious accounts by significantly accelerating the suspension of his accounts.The company has more than doubled its suspensions rate since last year, when members of Congress have grill leaders of & # 39; business on their reaction to the Russian disinformation campaign which was based on the social network. Twitter has suspended more than 70 million accounts in the past two months in its efforts to combat misinformation on its platform.

Twitter claims that 336 million users connect to the service each month. About 5% of its active users are fake or spam-related, according to business estimates, but external researchers said the figure is much higher.

Last week, Twitter started to delete a large number of inactive accounts. . The Twitter fan counts personalities such as President Trump and former President Barack Obama who retracted hundreds of thousands after the deletions

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