https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/
created by worstnerd on 06/12/2019 at 21:13 UTC*
54251 upvotes, 99 top-level comments (showing 25)
We were recently made aware of a post on Reddit[1] that included leaked documents from the UK. We investigated this account and the accounts connected to it, and today we believe this was part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.
Earlier this year Facebook discovered a Russian campaign[2] on its platform, which was further analyzed by the Atlantic Council and dubbed “Secondary Infektion[3].” Suspect accounts on Reddit were recently reported to us, along with indicators from law enforcement, and we were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination. We were then able to use these accounts to identify additional suspect accounts that were part of the campaign on Reddit. This group provides us with important attribution for the recent posting of the leaked UK documents, as well as insights into how adversaries are adapting their tactics.
2: https://about.fb.com/news/2019/05/more-cib-from-russia/
3: https://medium.com/dfrlab/top-takes-suspected-russian-intelligence-operation-39212367d2f0
In late October, an account u/gregoratior[4] posted the leaked documents and later reposted by an additional account u/ostermaxnn[5]. Additionally, we were able to find a pocket of accounts participating in vote manipulation[6] on the original post. All of these accounts have the same shared pattern as the original Secondary Infektion group detected, causing us to believe that this was indeed tied to the original group.
4: https://www.reddit.com/user/gregoratior/
5: https://www.reddit.com/user/ostermaxnn?
Outside of the post by u/gregoratior, none of these accounts or posts received much attention on the platform, and many of the posts were removed either by moderators or as part of normal content manipulation operations. The accounts posted in different regional subreddits, and in several different languages.
Karma distribution:
As a result of this investigation, we are banning 1 subreddit[7] and 61 accounts under our policies against vote manipulation and misuse of the platform. As we have done with previous influence operations, we will also preserve these accounts for a time, so that researchers and the public can scrutinize them to see for themselves how these accounts operated.
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukwhistleblower/
EDIT: I'm signing off for the evening. Thanks for the comments and questions.
​
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬──────────────┐ │ gregoratior[8 │ LuzRun[9] │ McDownes[10] │ davidjglover[ │ HarrisonBrig │ │ ] │ │ │ 11] │ gs[12] │ ╞═══════════════╪═══════════════╪════════════���══╪═══════════════╪══════════════╡ │ BillieFolmar[ │ jaimeibanez[1 │ robeharty[15] │ feliciahogg[1 │ KlausSteiner │ │ 13] │ 4] │ │ 6] │ [17] │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ alabelm[18] │ bernturmann[1 │ AntonioDiazz[ │ ciawahhed[21] │ krakodoc[22] │ │ │ 9] │ 20] │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ PeterMurtaugh │ blancoaless[2 │ zurabagriashv │ saliahwhite[2 │ fullekyl[27] │ │ [23] │ 4] │ ili[25] │ 6] │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ Rinzoog[28] │ almanzamary[2 │ Defiant_Emu[3 │ Ostermaxnn[31 │ LauraKnecht[ │ │ │ 9] │ 0] │ ] │ 32] │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ MikeHanon[33] │ estellatorres │ PastJournalis │ KattyTorr[36] │ TomSallee[37 │ │ │ [34] │ t[35] │ │ ] │ ├────────────���──┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ uzunadnan[38] │ EllisonRedfal │ vasiliskus[40 │ KimJjj[41] │ NicSchum[42] │ │ │ l[39] │ ] │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ lauraferrojo[ │ chavezserg[44 │ MaryCWolf[45] │ CharlesRichar │ brigittemaur │ │ 43] │ ] │ │ dson[46] │ [47] │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ MilitaryObser │ bellagara[49] │ StevtBell[50] │ SherryNuno[51 │ delmaryang[5 │ │ ver[48] │ │ │ ] │ 2] │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ RuffMoulton[5 │ francovaz[54] │ victoriasanch │ PushyFrank[56 │ │ │ 3] │ │ es[55] │ ] │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ kempnaomi[57] │ claudialopezz │ FeistyWedding │ demomanz[60] │ │ │ │ [58] �� [59] │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼──────────────┤ │ MaxKasyan[61] │ garrypugh[62] │ Party_Actuary │ rabbier[64] │ │ │ │ │ [63] │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────┘
edit:added subreddit link
8: https://www.reddit.com/user/gregoratior
9: https://www.reddit.com/user/LuzRun
10: https://www.reddit.com/user/McDownes
11: https://www.reddit.com/user/davidjglover
12: https://www.reddit.com/user/HarrisonBriggs
13: https://www.reddit.com/user/BillieFolmar
14: https://www.reddit.com/user/jaimeibanez
15: https://www.reddit.com/user/robeharty
16: https://www.reddit.com/user/feliciahogg
17: https://www.reddit.com/user/KlausSteiner
18: https://www.reddit.com/user/alabelm
19: https://www.reddit.com/user/bernturmann
20: https://www.reddit.com/user/AntonioDiazz
21: https://www.reddit.com/user/ciawahhed
22: https://www.reddit.com/user/krakodoc
23: https://www.reddit.com/user/PeterMurtaugh
24: https://www.reddit.com/user/blancoaless
25: https://www.reddit.com/user/zurabagriashvili
26: https://www.reddit.com/user/saliahwhite
27: https://www.reddit.com/user/fullekyl
28: https://www.reddit.com/user/Rinzoog
29: https://www.reddit.com/user/almanzamary
30: https://www.reddit.com/user/Defiant_Emu
31: https://www.reddit.com/user/Ostermaxnn
32: https://www.reddit.com/user/LauraKnecht
33: https://www.reddit.com/user/MikeHanon
34: https://www.reddit.com/user/estellatorres
35: https://www.reddit.com/user/PastJournalist
36: https://www.reddit.com/user/KattyTorr
37: https://www.reddit.com/user/TomSallee
38: https://www.reddit.com/user/uzunadnan
39: https://www.reddit.com/user/EllisonRedfall
40: https://www.reddit.com/user/vasiliskus
41: https://www.reddit.com/user/KimJjj
42: https://www.reddit.com/user/NicSchum
43: https://www.reddit.com/user/lauraferrojo
44: https://www.reddit.com/user/chavezserg
45: https://www.reddit.com/user/MaryCWolf
46: https://www.reddit.com/user/CharlesRichardson
47: https://www.reddit.com/user/brigittemaur
48: https://www.reddit.com/user/MilitaryObserver
49: https://www.reddit.com/user/bellagara
50: https://www.reddit.com/user/StevtBell
51: https://www.reddit.com/user/SherryNuno
52: https://www.reddit.com/user/delmaryang
53: https://www.reddit.com/user/RuffMoulton
54: https://www.reddit.com/user/francovaz
55: https://www.reddit.com/user/victoriasanches
56: https://www.reddit.com/user/PushyFrank
57: https://www.reddit.com/user/kempnaomi
58: https://www.reddit.com/user/claudialopezz
59: https://www.reddit.com/user/FeistyWedding
60: https://www.reddit.com/user/demomanz
61: https://www.reddit.com/user/MaxKasyan
62: https://www.reddit.com/user/garrypugh
63: https://www.reddit.com/user/Party_Actuary
64: https://www.reddit.com/user/rabbier
65: https://www.reddit.com/user/davecooperr
66: https://www.reddit.com/user/gilbmedina84
67: https://www.reddit.com/user/ZayasLiTel
68: https://www.reddit.com/user/Ritterc
Comment by jeffsu at 06/12/2019 at 21:20 UTC
180 upvotes, 3 direct replies
What subreddit was banned?
Comment by PineappleNarwhal at 06/12/2019 at 21:25 UTC
680 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Very cool
Does Reddit have a system in place already that could have detected this campaign, and if so how might the system change given the information about this campaign?
Comment by [deleted] at 06/12/2019 at 22:08 UTC*
280 upvotes, 7 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by __Hello_my_name_is__ at 06/12/2019 at 22:05 UTC
78 upvotes, 40 direct replies
Looking at those accounts, it's pretty obvious they're the same, they all post very similar political content in the same style all over the place.
What's confusing me is that there's no supposed rhyme or reason to the content they posted. It goes in all political directions, pro-US, anti-US, pro-EU, anti-EU, etc. And it's not even extreme views, either.
What the hell is the point of all this?
Comment by Silverdarlin1 at 06/12/2019 at 22:19 UTC
65 upvotes, 9 direct replies
As a Brit, this is actually really scary. The fact that the Russians are trying to rig the election hits home how dangerous that country really is
Comment by Dnuts at 06/12/2019 at 22:22 UTC
21 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Unfortunately this may well be the tip of the iceberg. Keep up the good work regardless.
Comment by DarthPorg at 06/12/2019 at 21:59 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Great job, team!
Comment by corkboy at 06/12/2019 at 22:16 UTC
38 upvotes, 2 direct replies
As we have done with previous influence operations, we will also preserve these accounts for a time, so that researchers and the public can scrutinize them to see for themselves how these accounts operated.
Good.
Comment by l-l___l-l at 07/12/2019 at 00:09 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why is this comment allowed in the locked post?
Comment by Minifig81 at 06/12/2019 at 23:50 UTC
10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
/u/worstnerd & crew, I appreciate your due diligence and hard work when isolating and finding these problems. However, you really, really need to check out /r/politics lately. There's been an influx of breitbart and other sites like it, spam. The accounts are almost always one to two days old, and always spam the same content which is right wing news orientation websites and they're always strangely quiet after the submissions. The mods of /r/politics refuse to do anything about it and refuse to acknowledge it.
Please look into it.
Comment by CurlSagan at 06/12/2019 at 23:20 UTC
26 upvotes, 3 direct replies
This comment, in particular, cracks me up:
"Ah yes, as a person who is definitely the American man and definitely many the thousands of the miles away from the Ukraine in my hometown of [AMERICAN_CITY], I believe that the [DEROGATORY_ADJECTIVE] American Politics is the interfering.
Also, I can't do the apostrophes because my Cyrillic keyboard makes it the difficult and I like to pepper the sentences with the word "the" like I'm garnishing my babushka's pelmeni with dill. I mean, uh, garnishing the American cheeseburgers with more the yellow American cheese. Ah, the shit!"
Comment by daddyfatsac at 07/12/2019 at 00:59 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
See Zuckerberg, was that really that hard?
Comment by Verify_23 at 06/12/2019 at 22:20 UTC
20 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Dibs on "Secondary Infektion" as the name for my new black metal band.
Comment by StAUG1211 at 06/12/2019 at 22:59 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What's with the basic account names? They may as well have called them 'Chet Americaman'.
Comment by nowihaveaname at 06/12/2019 at 22:37 UTC
17 upvotes, 5 direct replies
All Russia wants is destabilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Comment by Ivashkin at 06/12/2019 at 22:15 UTC
13 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Your security people should really spend a bit of time looking into /r/ukpolitics in a bit more detail.
Comment by AnonymousGuroLover at 06/12/2019 at 22:39 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I respect how openly and professionally you have handled this situation. And also, that you will keep the accounts and the subreddit available temporarily.
Comment by BigTunaTim at 06/12/2019 at 23:22 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank you all sincerely for your diligence on this. Like you said elsewhere it depends on users reporting suspicious activity, but there are other platforms that accept those reports and do little or nothing with them. It takes effort ($) to assimilate that data and find the patterns and it's laudable that the team continues to do the right thing. Thank you.
Comment by UnknownBinary at 07/12/2019 at 00:50 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Are there plans to release the collected post history as a dataset?
Comment by Osgood_Schlatter at 06/12/2019 at 22:53 UTC
70 upvotes, 22 direct replies
Some context for those of you outside of the UK.
These documents are UK officials' notes of preliminary trade talks with American officials.
They were recently announced by the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, in a press conference[1] that claimed they were evidence the UK government planned to sell out our health service to US corporate interests.
They do set out US objectives, but "do not provide evidence ministers have agreed the health service should be part of a trade deal with US[2]".
2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50572454
Separately, the UK Conservative government has recently been criticised for not publishing a report on Russian interference[3] in the UK, which several sources claim was ready to launch shortly before the election campaign began. Some have suggested this is because they thought it might suggest Russia backed the Leave campaign, others because it might show the UK government were lax on Russian dirty money entering the UK, and that some of that was donated to the Conservative party. All of these would be unwelcome news for the Conservative government during an election campaign.
3: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50366956
Whilst Russia are almost certainly pro-Brexit, given how helpful this leak has been to the opposition Labour party, I don't think they do want the governing Conservative party to win the current election campaign - after all, the current government led a global campaign to expel Russian diplomats after Salisbury, and have consistently pushed a hard line in the EU in favour of sanctions on Russia, and have stationed troops in Baltic NATO members to defend them against Russia.
On the other hand, there are quite a few reasons that Russia might prefer Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn:
Comment by [deleted] at 06/12/2019 at 22:19 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You are strong and wise, and I am very proud of you.
Comment by Terminator076 at 06/12/2019 at 22:30 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank you for the transparency!
I was wondering if you were planning to take action on the individual posts? Not that this is a necessity.
Additionally, this investigation took quite some time due to the extent of the situation and the research that needed to be done. Since it is necessary to battle and limit the occurrence of these situations, I was wondering if the way of reporting possible political bots and political influencers will change. If not, will it change for moderators of big political subreddits?
Comment by THEPRESIDENTIALPENIS at 07/12/2019 at 00:16 UTC*
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Thank you enormously.
I am a moderator on /r/Esptein. A few months ago a former American cop Mark Dougan (who since his involvement in the Epstein case has taken asylum in Russia and who you may recall from his role in the Seth Rich conspiracy, another Russian disinformation campaign[1]) posted on our subreddit concerning a press release. Prior to doing so he confirmed his identity with the moderators. Here[2] is the post.
1: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/yahoo-news/conspiracyland
I have read fairly extensively about the (batshit) Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracies -- it's clear both incorporate elements of the Epstein scandal and were promoted by IRA linked accounts on multiple platforms (for more see these seminal Rolling Stones[3] and NYT[4] investigations). Since the Dougan post it has been a constant concern of mine that disinformation has entered the subreddit. There have been more than a few posts where I suspect vote manipulation has occurred and there have been many comments that strike me as the kind of content we witnessed in /r/The_Donald in the lead up to the 2016 election.
3: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-125877/
4: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/10/business/media/pizzagate.html
I have roughly 100 questions but I'll stick to the most pressing: What tools are available to me to figure out whether coordination is occurring? Where can I report suspicious activity?
Edit: tense, a few more links
Comment by MrTheodore at 07/12/2019 at 00:50 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
What the heck is max karma?
There's an upper limit to karma or is that just like above a certain number?
Comment by skekze at 07/12/2019 at 00:59 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
take a look into economics or conspiracy and you'll find some russian spin, almost a war being fought there over who controls the medium of the story.
