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A concerted Russian hacking and misinformation online campaign in 2016 aimed to tip the US presidential election towards Donald Trump. Two weeks before the mid-term legislative elections, Moscow members are back to work.
The closure of thousands of accounts controlled by the Russians on Twitter and Facebook – as well as the indictments of 14 people belonging to the famous Russian troll agency Internet Research Agency – have steadily blunted their efforts to influence US policy.
#MAGA – Trump's Gathering Call to "Make America Great Again" – remains the hashtag topping the 18,000 tweets broadcast daily by hundreds of allied and Russian-backed Twitter accounts monitored by Hamilton 68, a followed by the Alliance for Securing Democracy in Washington.
The main linked website this week? A Republican voter registration page.
"After the 2016 elections, there was a lot of talk about the return of the Russians in 2018," said Suzanne Spaulding, Senior Advisor, Homeland Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"We know now: they never left."
On Friday, the US Department of Justice announced charges of criminal conspiracy against the Clerk of the Internet Research Agency, which manages the tens of millions of dollars spent by the group on information operations in the United States and Europe .
The charges related to social media accounts of IRA accounts believed to be American and aimed primarily at fanning the flames of political wrath.
"Just a friendly reminder to participate in the mid-term activities in 2018," said a tweet posted earlier this year by @ johncopper16, according to the prosecutor, as an identity created by the IRA.
"They hate you, they hate your ways … They hate the police, they hate the military, they hate your president."
Such divisive messages could influence the November 6 vote. Although the presidency is not at stake, congressional oversight is important, which makes voter turnout important in some races.
– 'Campaign to undermine democracy & # 39; –
That's not what worries American experts the most.
"The biggest concern is undermining public confidence in the credibility of the election result," said Spaulding. "It's really a broader campaign aimed at undermining democracy."
In 2016, according to US intelligence services, Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a concerted effort to disrupt the elections and remove Hillary Clinton voters in order to help the Trump campaign.
This included pirates from the GRU military intelligence corps who were introducing computers and communications from the Clinton campaign to steal documents that were later released to embarrass him.
In addition, the IRA launched a vast campaign of innovative disinformation on social media, which fueled anger, confusion and divisions, and also aimed to strengthen Trump.
On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, they created online identities and groups, gathered subscribers, endorsed, posted and shared fake news and angry messages, with tremendous impact.
This continued after the elections, until a year ago, when Twitter closed hundreds of accounts identified as part of Russia's political interference.
New accounts have emerged, many of them being automated robots. Rather than creating content, they have amplified the huge amount of divisional material that already exists, said Bret Schafer, who oversees the Hamilton 68 website.
"Now people are sitting at the IRA in St. Petersburg, they do not even have to create that sort of thing – it's created for them."
– Retweeting Americans angry –
One example, said Ben Nimmo, who heads the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, was the intense online battle that lasted two weeks against Brett Kavanaugh, a candidate for Trump's Supreme Court, in September.
The massive amount of false reports and virulent personal attacks across social media comes largely from American accounts, he said.
The Russians only had to stir the pot by retweeting it and republishing it, which can be done with bots.
"There are a lot of angry Americans on both sides who are quite capable of generating massive traffic themselves," he said.
After Twitter launched a second batch of fake accounts several weeks ago, the volume of Russian activity fell sharply, Nimmo noted.
The platform has closed thousands of people run by Russians and responsible for some nine million tweets, including those mentioned in the criminal complaint filed Friday.
Since then, Nimmo said, "They have clearly tried to hide their tracks."
However, it is not clear that they are making a concerted "third wave" effort at the moment.
Two weeks before the elections, the site of Hamilton 68 shows that Moscow did not give up, even if its activity has faded.
This week, the top 10 topics and related articles in the follow-up accounts were heavily pro-Trump and pro-Republican: they highlighted the latest Trump rally, the alleged threat of a migrant caravan in Mexico and a hashtag recently favored by Trump, #jobsnotmobs.
James Lewis, CSIS's Russian expert on cybercrime, thinks the Russians are perfecting their skills for the next presidential race, rather than trying to influence the current election cycle.
"They may save their best tricks for 2020," he said.
Twitter and Facebook have closed thousands of accounts under Russian control
The United States Department of Justice has announced charges of criminal conspiracy against the Internet Research Agency official, who manages the tens of millions of dollars he spends on information operations in the United States and Canada. Europe.
The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, a US Supreme Court justice, photographed in September 2018, sparked a huge amount of controversial online commentary.
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