The threat of Russian trolls has not disappeared as Election Day approaches

"We have said time and time again that it was a shameful and defamatory campaign, driven by the desire of some US politicians to get the advantage in their quarrels." between parties while exerting pressure on Russia, "said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. .

In August, US intelligence presented a united front in the White House information room, while senior officials from several agencies spoke of a coordinated attempt to combat electoral interference.

"We continue to attend a ubiquitous messaging campaign from Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States," said National Intelligence Director Dan Coats at the meeting.

But the renewed efforts of Silicon Valley and Washington to tackle the problem, as well as US sanctions, have not deterred the Russians, it seems.

While the United States has not experienced anything "close" to the number of hacking attempts in view of the 2016 elections, the influence of social media and disinformation campaigns of foreign actors is are being pursued in 2018, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

"This type of activity has persisted," said DHS Under-Secretary Christopher Krebs on Friday at an election safety information meeting with representatives of the United States. State and the federal government.

The department continued to see the activity of Russians, Chinese and "more and more" Iranians "to use social media to influence the American public, to sow discord and increase divisions," he said. Krebs.

The operation of the trolls, according to Friday's complaint, is still well funded. The group spent $ 12.2 million in 2017 and, in March of this year, Khusyaynova set a monthly operating budget of about $ 1.7 million, according to the complaint.

The complaint explains how, until last May, the group pretended to be Americans on Twitter, publishing articles on American politics and various social and cultural problems. Russia's efforts, however, do not seem to have been halted in May. In July, Facebook removed a network of pages posted on a white supremacy march in Washington, DC, according to the company, which suspected that these pages came from Russia.

In 2016, St. Petersburg agents paid unsuccessfully for Facebook ads for Americans in Russian rubles. Groups like theirs are increasingly tending to hide their identities with social media companies and avoid detection, said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook CNN recently.

Gleicher, a former federal prosecutor, is part of the new hiring group that the tech company has created from the intelligence community as it attempts to tame state-sponsored propaganda.

Google and Twitter have been less open about the steps they have taken to secure their platforms in the run-up to the elections – but they both say they are resolved to tackle the problem and have implementing new rules on political advertising and other election-related issues. .

"The investigation team has benefited from exceptional cooperation from private sector companies, such as Facebook and Twitter," the Justice Department said in a statement released on Tuesday. Friday during the revelation of the lawsuit filed against Khusyaynova.

To plan the mid-term reviews, DHS reviewed Russian spear phishing campaigns and other types of attacks against the national and local electoral infrastructure to "ensure that this does not happen again". said Krebs.

Krebs told reporters that given the relative level of advance on election day, the DHS is trying to determine if there will be any last-minute cyber-attacks or election intrusions until then undetected.

"When I do not see a lot of activities, it makes me think of worse scenarios," he said.