The Techniques
One Operation, Many Platforms
From the beginning, Secondary Infektion was a uniquely cross-platform operation. Its earliest and most prolific persona, the “Blue Man” (described below), ran accounts on six Russian-language blog forums, and that was only the start: as of April 2020, Graphika had identified posts by the operation on over 300 platforms and forums, ranging from mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to discussion forums from Azerbaijan to Australia.
Use of platforms: where Secondary Infektion posted the most.[179]
Its range expanded as the operation progressed. It started in Russian on LiveJournal in early 2014 and added English- and German-language personas and burner accounts on BlogSpot, Twitter, and YouTube later that same year. It spread out rapidly in the second quarter of 2015, adding in many of the forums that came to characterize it, notably WordPress, Reddit, Medium, Before It’s News, and the Russian-language cont.ws. As these came to the fore, its emphasis on LiveJournal decreased: Medium played a particularly important role in 2016, while Reddit was prominent among its choices in 2017-2018.
The breakdown of platforms varied between languages. Secondary Infektion posted to the largest number of platforms in Russian, choosing not just Russian-based platforms, but forums across the former USSR, such as stena.ee (Estonia), amigos.lv (Latvia), dosug.md (Moldova), and yvision.kz (Kazakhstan). Its English-language choices were slightly more restricted but ranged from global giants to fringe forums such as dover.co.uk (Dover, in England), cssforum.com.pk (the Pakistani civil service), and ozpolitic.com (Australia). In Spanish, the operation only used a few platforms, notably Reddit and burbuja.info (ostensibly dedicated to real estate).
Sometimes Secondary Infektion abandoned certain forums, such as indymedia.co.uk, last used at the end of 2016, and articlesreader.com, used in 2016-2017; its presence on BlogSpot and YouTube also dropped off sharply after mid-2016. Overall, however, the trend was for an increasing number of platforms. It was only after the operation was exposed in May-June 2019 that its posting and use of platforms temporarily collapsed.
Platform Evolution
The evolution in platforms and posting patterns gave Secondary Infektion an increasing ability to spread its content to ever further corners of the internet. This did not typically translate into increased engagement, at least so far as we have been able to observe, but it indicates an operation that was aggressive in its attempts to reach an audience. This is best expressed by comparing posts from the operation’s earlier and later stages..
Secondary Infektion’s evolution across the top 25 platforms where it posted.
For example, on May 25, 2015, an anonymous poster published an article on cyberguerrilla.org headlined, “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize.”[180] The cyberguerrilla.org article embedded a YouTube video (now removed) with the same headline: this featured a man’s computer-distorted voice reading out the text of the cyberguerrilla article against a backdrop of archive footage.[181]
The article presented a screenshot of a letter attributed to the then-Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, and addressed to the US Ambassador to Norway, Julie Furuta-Toy. In the letter, “Groysman” asked the ambassador to “exert additional leverages” on the Nobel Peace Prize committee to ensure that Poroshenko won it. The initial spread of this story was exclusively through posts and accounts attributable to Secondary Infektion, leading us to conclude that the letter was a forgery launched online by the operation.
The same article appeared anonymously on homment.com on May 27, 2015,[182] with a link to the cyberguerrilla.org article embedded. The following day, a German translation appeared on websites that included ask1.org[183] and the German section of indymedia.org,[184] and a Russian translation appeared on platforms including cont.ws[185] and X-True.info.[186]
The transmission of the “Nobel” claim by assets run by Secondary Infektion, from cyberguerrilla[.]org, YouTube, and homment[.]com in English, into German and Russian, using the personas “Anonymous,” “Kries Larsson,” an unnamed post, “PolitGraben,” and “Ino-News.”
This was already a multi-platform and multi-language operation, but it was relatively limited in scope. In 2018, by contrast, Secondary Infektion was operating across far more platforms. On June 4, 2018, the operation posted a Medium article headlined, “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists” from a single-use burner account.[187] The article accused the United Kingdom of pressuring Sweden and Israel to confirm that Russia had poisoned Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, “despite the obvious invalidity of London’s position that only Russia was able to produce and use this chemical agent.”
The same day, a user called “Peterblom,” or variants on that name, posted the identical article to the BuzzFeed forum (since deleted),[188] thestudentroom.co.uk,[189] scoop.it,[190] defendingthetruth.com[191] and homment.com.[192] On June 5, a single-use burner account called “Tiagorivas” posted a Spanish translation on globedia.com[193] and burbuja.info.[194] On June 21, a Ukrainian-language account, Михайло Дричак (Mikhailo Drichak), posted a translation of the Medium article to blogs including korrespondent.net,[195] pero.org.ua,[196] and blog.i.ua.[197] While far apart in time and space, these were all the work of the same operation, based on a single forged document.
A simplified diagram of the spread of the article by assets commanded by Secondary Infektion, from the English-language persona “Peter Blom” or “Peter Bloms” (left), through the Spanish-language persona “Tiago Rivas” (center) and the Ukrainian-language persona Михайло Дричак (“Mikhailo Drichak”), right.
English Outlets
Secondary Infektion used a wide range of English-language forums. Some served as primary locations, where the operation posted its initial stories: Medium was chief among these, most likely because it provided a visually attractive platform with a simple user interface and a reliable way of uploading and hosting images - an important point for Secondary Infektion, which relied on forgeries for so much of its work. Others served as secondary amplification points, where burner personas could share links to the original stories in special-interest groups. Reddit and Facebook were important in this regard. The operation used a handful of Twitter accounts in its early years, but largely dropped these as it shifted more exclusively to using burner accounts.
Top 15 platforms where Secondary Infektion posted in English.
Buzzing BuzzFeed
Secondary Infektion paid particular attention to the BuzzFeed Community forum, an unmoderated, user-generated forum that allowed the operation to share URLs containing a “BuzzFeed” link (in reality, BuzzFeed’s news content is primarily hosted on a slightly different domain, using buzzfeednews.com instead of buzzfeed.com). Infektion paid particular attention to the BuzzFeed Community forum, an unmoderated, user-generated forum that uses the same top-level domain as BuzzFeed’s regular news reporting. Secondary Infektion submitted stories to this forum in English and then pointed back to them from other posts in multiple languages. Sometimes, the operation attributed these stories to BuzzFeed itself. The use of the BuzzFeed Community thus seems to have been an attempt to increase the operation’s legitimacy by acquiring a URL starting with “buzzfeed.com.”
Three Secondary Infektion posts on a fake “interview with an MI6 agent” that the operation originally planted on the BuzzFeed Community forum.[198] The “interview” claimed that MI6 had interfered in the US election to prevent Donald Trump’s victory. The top image shows the original post. The lower left and right images show the follow-on articles in French [199] and German,[200] saying that BuzzFeed itself had attributed the “election interference” to MI6.
Russian Outlets
Secondary Infektion was also a prolific poster across Russian forums. As with its English-langage targets, the portfolio of forums it used grew with time. For the benefit of users unfamiliar with the Russian blogging environment, we describe the main platforms in the appendix.
Top 15 platforms where Secondary Infektion posted in Russian.
This Russian-language content should not be overlooked. The very first posts we have identified from the operation were in Russian and targeted the opposition, especially those around Alexei Navalny, who focused on corruption. After the exposures of 2019, the operation appears to have all but stopped its English-language activity but to have continued posting in Russian.
It is an important reminder that one of the most consistent targets of Kremlin influence operations, if not the most consistent, has been the Russian population itself. Political influence operations begin at home, and any accusation that “the Russians” used Secondary Infektion to attack the West should be met with the fact that “the Russians” were among its targets.
Range of Languages
Secondary Infektion started in Russian but it quickly branched out: by the end of 2014 it was already running personas in English and German as well.[201] These three languages remained the backbone of its activity, but with time, it added Spanish, Ukrainian, and French to the mix. Sporadically, the operation also posted in Swedish, and Graphika also identified a very small number of posts in other languages that appeared to be translations of the operation’s work.
Secondary Infektion posts by language.
Secondary Infektion language breakdown over time.
In all except Russian, the writing was marked by errors not characteristic of a native speaker but too fluent to be the product of a machine translation. This suggests that Secondary Infektion had some form of access to content creators in at least seven languages, a likely indicator of the resources at its disposal. It is also one probable reason why Secondary Infektion’s products routinely failed to gain traction in any language other than Russian.
One significant question around the operation is why it focused on this set of languages. English and Russian were obviously crucial for external and internal audiences. Spanish was useful internationally, and German and French were important in Europe (there was no indication of attempts to target French-speaking communities in Africa). But there was no systematic posting in Italian, Polish, or Arabic that we have been able to identify with high confidence; there were posts in Swedish, but apparently neither Finnish (closer to Russia) nor Norwegian (bordering on Russia and a NATO member). This returns us to the biggest questions of Secondary Infektion: Who was behind it, and what were they trying to achieve?
High OPSEC and Burner Accounts
Secondary Infektion stood out for its attention to OPSEC. Multiple platforms working alongside our team on this investigation have confirmed the operation’s systematic use of technical obfuscation techniques, such as the systematic use of proxy servers and internet-based phone numbers and the obfuscation of their language settings. Open-source investigation showed that the operation made massive use of single-use burner accounts, especially from mid-2016 onward. Such burner accounts made it difficult for investigators to move from one Secondary Infektion story to another, as they left no technical clues and almost no content clues. The operation ran through literally hundreds of such accounts that it created, used, and immediately abandoned in the space of a single day, or even a single hour.
This increasing dominance of burner accounts held true across languages and platforms. It is most easily observed on Reddit, which provides precise time and date information for the creation of accounts and posts, but the same pattern applied across every platform that provided a creation date for its accounts.
For example, one story of the 2016 vintage claimed - based on an apparently forged letter - that Ukraine was lobbying for former prisoner of war Nadya Savchenko to be nominated UN Secretary General. On Reddit, this was posted by a persona called “u/AokPriz” at 09:26:57 UTC on June 8, 2016.[202] According to online tool redective.com, “u/AokPriz” was created just under 14 minutes earlier, at 09:13:05 UTC that morning,
Top left, profile information for u/AokPriz, showing the date and time of its creation, from redective.com. Bottom, the time and date of its only post, less than 14 minutes later. Top right, the account’s life story, converted into Universal Time.
A story of the 2018 vintage, based on a forged screenshot from security analysis company Stratfor, claimed that the United States was concerned about an influx of Chinese spies.[203] This was translated into German and placed on a number of websites, including one called chinaseite.de (its name literally means “China page”).[204] Chinaseite.de shows the date and time at which an account was created and the date and time at which the user was last online. In the case of this account, its entire life lasted just seven minutes.
Profile information for “jalindner” on chinaseite.de. The statistics in the inset typify Secondary Infektion’s approach: “Registered: 28.08.2018, 12:03. Last activity: 28.08.2018, 12:10. Total contributions: 1.”
Burner accounts like these were Secondary Infektion’s pawns on the disinformation chessboard: numerous and disposable, but limited in effectiveness. Creating a new account for every post contributed to the operation’s tight OPSEC, but it put the operators in the position of having to build a new audience from scratch with every single post. None of its attempts to target interest groups and niche communities could overcome the fact that its accounts had no personality and no posting history and almost invariably posted documents that were palpable fakes.
Use of Forgeries
Very often, though not exclusively, Secondary Infektion based its articles on “leaked” documents or publications that it appears to have forged itself or to have acquired from other forgers for its exclusive use. The range of documents included letters (the most common form of forgery, especially in Ukrainian), emails, blogs, news articles, websites, social media posts, and even petitions. These “leaks” were typically embedded in the text of the article, usually via an image hosting site such as Imgur; sometimes, the platform in question could not handle the image, leaving a thumbnail or a raw URL instead of the picture. Quality control was not one of Secondary Infektion’s defining features.
Article attributed to American strategic analysis firm Stratfor alleging US concerns over Chinese spying. The headline, “USA in Chinese cobweb,” is an unidiomatic turn of phrase and does not appear anywhere on the Stratfor site.[205]
Left, the fake Stratfor article embedded into a Secondary Infektion Medium post.[206] Right, the same article on cssforum.com.pk, one of the more unusual sites that Secondary Infektion used (it is dedicated to the Pakistani civil service).[207] Note how the image failed to display in the right-hand post, leaving the bare Imgur link visible.[208]
Sometimes, the forgeries involved multiple levels of deception. One “screenshot” published on September 18, 2018 featured a view of a Reddit page that contained a summary of an article attributed to British tabloid the Daily Mirror.[209] The article, in clumsy English, stated that British intelligence had wiretapped US President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as he exposed a secret deal with Britain’s Conservative party under which Britain would make Brexit “as tough as possible” and would make Boris Johnson prime minister, in return for a sweeping trade deal with the United States. A search on Reddit showed no results for the alleged headline,[210] and a Google search for the term returned no verbatim matches.[211] We conclude that the Reddit post and the Daily Mirror article were both fakes created by Secondary Infektion to provoke accusations that the United States was interfering in British politics.
Secondary Infektion post of an alleged screenshot of a Reddit post, featuring a further screenshot of an alleged article in British tabloid the Daily Mirror. Neither the Reddit post nor the Mirror article ever existed.
Similarly, in October 2017, just after Germany’s federal parliamentary elections, Secondary Infektion planted the story that the victorious Christian Democrat party (CDU) had only won because millions of newly naturalized immigrants voted for it.[212] The article was based on a screenshot of a tweet attributed to the former director of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Michael Georg Link.[213] The tweet, in turn, embedded a photo of an apparent ODIHR report that claimed 98 percent of recent citizens had voted CDU. However, the genuine ODIHR report made no such claim,[214] and Link’s timeline showed no sign of any such tweet.[215] Both the screenshot and the document are most likely forgeries.
Secondary Infektion article embedding a forged tweet which embeds a forged OSCE election report.
Many of these forgeries, especially those that were not in Russian or Ukrainian, betrayed themselves by basic errors. One purported letter from the Spanish Foreign Minister, alleging that extremist Remainers in the United Kingdom were plotting to assassinate Boris Johnson to stop Brexit, misspelled the minister’s name in his signature block.[216] Another letter, signed by the “Director General of Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) Jan-Olof Lindt,” accused the United Kingdom of trying to force allied countries to state that only Russia could have poisoned former Soviet agent Sergei Skripal with nerve agent in April 2018.[217] This may have come as a surprise to the actual head of the FOI at the time, whose name is Jan-Olof Lind.[218]
Even without such basic errors, the forgeries often betrayed themselves by using forms of language that did not match the purported author, such as basic errors in grammar and idiom. For example, one English-language article attributed to the UK’s former Attorney General Dominic Grieve accused Georgia of being unready for EU and NATO membership.[219] The article was based on a doctored screenshot of an article on UK domestic politics that Grieve had published in Prospect magazine.[220] This was couched in stilted and unidiomatic English unlikely to flow from the keyboard of the UK’s former Attorney General: “Considering that stability of the foreign policy is pivotal when estimating democracy development in that country, improvement in relations of Russia and Georgia may seriously hinder the effective cooperation of Tbilisi with the European Union and with NATO.”
Left, the fake by Secondary Infektion. Right, the original article from the Prospect website. Note the identical image in both.
Similarly, a letter attributed to US Senator Bob Corker in 2015 contained clumsy, unidiomatic formulations such as “The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is deeply concerned by repeated failures of Ukraine to adhere to previously reached agreements.” [221]
The letter attributed to US Senator Bob Corker and addressed to then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, accusing the latter of provoking ethnic tensions in Ukraine.
Sometimes, the people whose identities were forged discovered the forgeries themselves and called out their errors. For example, one Secondary Infektion article posted on March 24, 2016, claimed that Ukraine’s then-Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko had written to then-US acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland,[222] asking for help in postponing the Dutch referendum on the European Union’s Agreement with Ukraine.[223] Jaresko discovered the fake letter and corrected it.
Tweet by Natalia Jaresko correcting the formatting of another Secondary Infektion forgery and calling out its poor English.[224]
By April 21, 2020, Graphika had identified some 250 images that the operation had planted in its articles, almost all of them suspected forgeries. We expect that more remain to be found.
[1] As the identity of the operator is currently unknown, it is commonly referred to by the nickname of the operation itself. “Secondary Infektion” is named after the Soviet-era “Operation Infektion,” which planted the false story that the United States had made the AIDS virus in many publications around the world. See David Robert Grimes, “Russian fake news is not new: Soviet Aids propaganda cost countless lives,” The Guardian, June 14, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/jun/14/russian-fake-news-is-not-new-soviet-aids-propaganda-cost-countless-lives.
[2] Nathaniel Gleicher, “Removing more coordinated inauthentic behavior from Russia,” Facebook, May 6, 2019, https://about.fb.com/news/2019/05/more-cib-from-russia/. This is not the longest running network known: an Iranian network that Facebook exposed in May 2020 operated sporadically from 2011 to 2020. See Graphika’s report, “Iran’s Broadcaster: Inauthentic Behavior,” Graphika, May 5, 2020, https://graphika.com/reports/irans-broadcaster-inauthentic-behavior/.
[3] Ben Nimmo, Graham Brookie et al., “Operation Secondary Infektion,” Atlantic Council, June 22, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Operation-Secondary-Infektion_English.pdf.
This is the report which gave the operation its popular name, “Secondary Infektion”.
[4] Adam Rawnsley, “Russian Trolls Hype Coronavirus and Giuliani Conspiracies,” The Daily Beast, April 9, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies.
[5] Secondary Infektion targeted sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland, among other issues. To avoid confusion, this report refers to the Irish Republican Army as the “IRA,” the Real Irish Republican Army as the “Real IRA,” and the Internet Research Agency as the “Russian IRA.”
[6] For the Russian IRA’s election interference, see Indictment 1:18-cr-00032-DLF, “United States of America v. Internet Research Agency LLC et al.,” US Department of Justice, February 16, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download. For the GRU, see indictment 1:18-cr-00215-ABJ, “United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyshko et al.,” US Department of Justice, July 13, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download.
[7] See, for example, the article by the Secondary Infektion persona “Lukas Esmerald,” “Hillary Clinton, a killer (proclaimed) above the law,” in homment.com, October 31, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154348/https://homment.com/Hillary-Clinton-a-killer-proclaimed-above-the-law.
[8] For example, persona “DreuxVachon,” “Emmanuel Macron: a new hope of migrants in Europe?”, Medium, March 16, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160806/https://medium.com/@DreuxVachon/emmanuel-macron-a-new-hope-of-migrants-in-europe-b6d07e0a111b. We are grateful to Quora for bringing this post to our attention.
[9] See for example the article by persona “kinstry,” “Ukraine ‘drowns’ The Sweden Democrats?”, defendingthetruth.com, August 30, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200421092045/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/ukraine-drowns-the-sweden-democrats.102944/.
[10] Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. United Kingdom: Profile, 2020.
[11] Persona “Chris Woods,” “UK's GCHQ to support Democrats during the 2018 midterms,” ozpolitic.com, August 3, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200521201759/http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1533288024/10. The same persona posted it to cssforum.com.pk, a forum for the Pakistan civil service, on the same day: https://web.archive.org/web/20200521202026/http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-compulsory-subjects/current-affairs/120717-uks-gchq-support-democrats-during-2018-midterms.html.
[12] Among others, by persona “Ari Pellms,” “Will American senators support Fethullah Gulen in his dispute with Turkey?”, Medium, February 18, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200513231939/https://medium.com/@AriPellms/will-american-senators-support-fethullah-gulen-in-his-dispute-with-turkey-479c44b7519b.
[13] Among others, by persona “Иннокентий Ньюсовский” (“Innocent Newsovsky”), “Американские сенаторы поддержат Фетхуллаха Гюлена в споре с Турцией” (“American senators will support Fethullah Gulen in his dispute with Turkey”), mirtesen.ru, February 20, 2016, https://ino-news.mirtesen.ru/blog/43222494738/Amerikanskie-senatoryi-podderzhat-Fethullaha-Gyulena-v-spore-s-T?utm_referrer=mirtesen.ru.
[14] Persona “Norman Mogano,” “En Suecia proponen crear su propia ‘Comisión de Mueller’” (“Proposal in Sweden to create their own ‘Mueller Commission’”), globedia.com, November 16, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418192247/http://globedia.com/suecia-proponen-crear-propia-comision-mueller.
[15] Carl Bildt, “Ny dramatik i syriska tragedin” (“New drama in the Syrian tragedy”), carlbildt.wordpress.com, April 9, 2918, https://carlbildt.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/ny-dramatik-i-syriska-tragedian/.
[16] Persona “Chloe Rebelish,” “Radioactive Rain Over Europe (Greenpeace)”, YouTube, July 22, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mu1tvyfD-U&t=2s.
[17] Persona “EnniLowre,” “Corruption in international sports supervisory authorities. Ban of meldonium is due to unfair competition between pharmaceutical companies,” topix.com, April 15, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20170802165139/http://www.topix.com/forum/sports/T5KD8MKFTICE78AT7.
[18]See Ben Nimmo, “UK Trade Leaks,” Graphika, December 2, 2019, https://graphika.com/reports/UK-trade-leaks/.
[19] Persona “Artendrix,” “The Trojan Pony of Brexit,” Reddit, March 12, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418165939/https://www.reddit.com/r/brexit/comments/83tmit/the_trojan_pony_of_brexit/?ref=readnext.
[20] See the Graphika team, “Iran’s Broadcaster: Inauthentic Behavior,” Graphika, May 5, 2020, https://graphika.com/reports/irans-broadcaster-inauthentic-behavior/.
[21] Twitter Safety, “Information operations directed at Hong Kong,” Twitter, August 19, 2019, https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/information_operations_directed_at_Hong_Kong.html.
[22] For example Nathaniel Gleicher, “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior in Spain,” Facebook, September 20, 2019, https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-in-spain/.
[23] See page 8 and footnote 17.
[24] For examples of previous targeting of the White Helmets by the GRU, see for instance: “From Russia With Blogs,” Graphika, Feb. 12th 2020, https://www.graphika.com/reports/from-russia-with-blogs/. For targeting by the IRA, see: io-archive.org. For broader context, see: Starbird, Kate, et al. "Ecosystem or echo-system? exploring content sharing across alternative media domains." Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 2018.
[25] Nika Aleksejeva, “Secondary Infektion redux? Suspected Russian intelligence operation targets Greenland,” DFRLab, November 13, 2019, https://medium.com/dfrlab/secondary-infektion-redux-suspected-russian-intelligence-operation-targets-greenland-c4e04deb27c5.
[26] Nika Aleksejeva, “Lingering Infektion: Latvian operation mimicked Secondary Infektion tactics,” DFRLab, December 10, 2019, https://medium.com/dfrlab/lingering-infektion-latvian-operation-mimicked-secondary-infektion-tactics-bc0bb62eacaa.
[27] u/worstnerd, “Suspected campaign from Russia on Reddit,” Reddit, December 6, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/.
[28] Ben Nimmo, “UK Trade Leaks,” Graphika, December 2, 2019, updated December 8, 2019, https://graphika.com/reports/UK-trade-leaks/.
[29] Insikt Group, “Intent to Infekt: ‘Operation Pinball’ Tactics Reminiscent of ‘Operation Secondary Infektion’,” Recorded Future, April 8, 2020, https://www.recordedfuture.com/operation-pinball-tactics/.
[30] Adam Rawnsley, “Russian Trolls Hype Coronavirus and Giuliani Conspiracies,” Daily Beast, April 9, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies?ref=author.
[31] For a rapid overview of attribution methods, see: www.attribution.news.
[32] Nathaniel Gleicher, “Removing More Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From Russia,” Facebook, May 6, 2019, https://about.fb.com/news/2019/05/more-cib-from-russia/.
[33] User “worstnerd,” “Suspected campaign from Russia on Reddit,” Reddit, December 6, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/.
[34] Tulay Karadeniz and Maria Kiselyova, “Turkey downs Russian warplane near Syria border, Putin warns of 'serious consequences',” Reuters, November 25, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey/turkey-downs-russian-warplane-near-syria-border-putin-warns-of-serious-consequences-idUSKBN0TD0IR20151125.
[35] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Red Alert: Advice against all travel. Or why would anyone go to Turkey these days?”, blogspot.com, December 1, 2015, https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2015/12/red-alert-advice-against-all-travel-or.html.
[36] Persona “pormatt,” “Spain's Intel: Remainers Plan to Assassinate Boris Johnson,” politicaldiscussion.net, August 13, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418172422/https://politicaldiscussion.net/threads/spains-intel-remainers-plan-to-assassinate-boris-johnson.254/ .
[37] Unattributed post, “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize,” homment.com, 27 May, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140715/https://homment.com/ukrainenobel.
[38] Persona “vicmilosh,” “Банальный закат Европы” (“Europe’s banal sunset”), stena.ee, November 18, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418202116/https://www.stena.ee/blog/banalnyj-zakat-evropy.
[39] Persona “demonmanz,” “Chancellor of Germany and female alcoholism,” Reddit, April 10, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161123/https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/64ig7s/chancellor_of_germany_and_female_alcoholism/.
[40] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Kaczynski's FRAXA threatens Europe! Why the truth is concealed?”, beforeitsnews.com, April 13, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418150138/https://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2016/04/kaczynskis-fraxa-threatens-europe-why-the-truth-is-concealed-2602086.html.
[41] Persona “Joe Lane,” “The EU Puts Off the Pan-European Recognition of Armenian Genocide Because of Turkey,” Medium, 22 October 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418183806/https://medium.com/@lanejo/the-eu-puts-off-the-pan-european-recognition-of-armenian-genocide-because-of-turkey-87b3479b5af3.
[42] Persona “robeharty,” “IRE enlists Muslim militants!”, Reddit, April 22, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418195148/https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bfzfbb/ira_enlists_muslim_militants/.
[43] For example persona “Josef Hashever,” “‘Polish Auschwitz and Treblinka’ surpass Volhynia, Ukrainian official says,” beforeitsnews.com, Juy 11, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418203351/https://beforeitsnews.com/opinion/2016/07/polish-auschwitz-and-treblinka-surpass-volhynia-ukrainian-official-says-2456706.html.
[44] Persona “Fellow Citizen”, “ German police: migrants threaten to assault women on St. Valentine’s Day,” Medium, February 3, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422230722/https://medium.com/@FellowCitizen/german-police-migrants-threaten-to-assault-women-on-st-valentine-s-day-8784af3049e2.
[45] Guest user, “What does Trump's support of Scottish nationalists portend for the EU?”, homment.com, June 7, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418170800/https://homment.com/kkj0jm76phAHWgoYSjgx.
[46] Persona “Leaky Leak,” “Being friendly American way. The USA was spying on the British Royal Family,” indymedia.org.uk, April 5, 2026, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145314/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2016/04/524701.html.
[47] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Jewish exodus from Ukraine,” blogspot.com, May 15, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140311/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2015/05/jewish-exodus-from-ukraine.html.
[48] Persona “Albert Fulop,” “Ukraine after presidential elections. Radicals threaten national minorities,” Medium, May 28, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418195707/https://medium.com/@fulopalb/ukraine-after-presidential-elections-radicals-threaten-national-minorities-352267d3c428.
[49] Persona “MilDavid,” “Ukraine puts Donald Trump on blacklist,” homment.com, June 20, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422232829/https://homment.com/yiPdDhuIJ2S44Lx0YEkX; persona ”AdkinsJan,” “Ukraine started supplying Kurds with Javelins,” homment.com, June 25, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418171255/https://homment.com/evApUNhtKfRrYuS6aAjX.
[50] Persona “ArmanRivar,” “USA and UK: policy of the biggest fraud,” Reddit, April 11, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418170322/https://www.reddit.com/r/Nigeria/comments/8bhn5i/usa_and_uk_policy_of_the_biggest_fraud/.
[51] Persona “Cory MIller,” “What does Trump’s support of Scottish nationalists portend for the EU?”, indybay.org, June 7, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404071417/https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/06/07/18815543.php.
[52] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Caspian littoral states staying in expectation of ‘colored’ revolutions,” beforeitsnews.com, July 22, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418142131/https://beforeitsnews.com/protests-demonstrations/2015/07/caspian-littoral-states-staying-in-expectation-of-colored-revolutions-2455918.html.
[53] Persona “Military Observer,” “Flowers for Kim Jong-Un or Operation White Chrysanthemum,” Quora, November 10, 2017, https://archive.vn/wip/Y1q9C.
[54] Persona “Sam Alonso,” “EU provides support to Catalan separatists,” September 29, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418164035/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/eu-provides-support-to-catalan-separatists.62578/.
[55] Persona “Joe Lane,” “The EU Puts Off the Pan-European Recognition of Armenian Genocide Because of Turkey,” Medium, October 22, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418183806/https://medium.com/@lanejo/the-eu-puts-off-the-pan-european-recognition-of-armenian-genocide-because-of-turkey-87b3479b5af3.
[56] Persona “Steven Lang,” “US and Poland promote the UNSC resolution on reparations from Germany,” Medium, May 24, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418195630/https://medium.com/@langste/us-and-poland-promote-the-unsc-resolution-on-reparations-from-germany-efd02b778c86.
[57] Unattributed article, “Hillary Clinton, a killer (proclaimed) above the law,” homment.com, October 31, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154348/https://homment.com/Hillary-Clinton-a-killer-proclaimed-above-the-law; persona “Lukas Esmeraldas,” “Who else is pumping money into the election campaign of Clinton?”, defendingthetruth.com, November 5, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154542/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/who-else-is-pumping-money-into-the-election-campaign-of-clinton.57635/.
[58] Persona “Edgars Paukas,” “NED is Concerned with the Upcoming Elections in Latvia,” Medium, October 3, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418181918/https://medium.com/@paukas/ned-is-concerned-with-the-upcoming-elections-in-latvia-cceb63b0d3c9. The authors are grateful to Adam Rawnsley of the Daily Beast, who first identified this post.
[59] Persona “Andrew Hobbs,” “Another ‘Mueller Commission’ is Suggested to be Created in Sweden,” defendingthetruth.com, November 14, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418191755/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/another-mueller-commission-is-suggested-to-be-created-in-sweden.106029/.
[60] Persona “Fellow Citizen,” “German police: migrants threaten to assault women on St. Valentine’s Day,” Medium, February 3, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422230722/https://medium.com/@FellowCitizen/german-police-migrants-threaten-to-assault-women-on-st-valentine-s-day-8784af3049e2.
[61] Persona “Lunatic Joe,” “Migration crisis is an accelerator of European nationalism,” indymedia.org.uk, October 12, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200426133156/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/10/522657.html. A Russian translation was posted by operation persona “Ino-News” at https://web.archive.org/web/20200426134253/https://hugeclick.ru/migracionnyi-krizis-katalizator-nacionalizma-es/3/. Reverse searching the image with Google, Yandex, and Tin-Eye showed that it was not posted anywhere else.
[62] Persona “Limkos Stamp,” “Dome Mosque,” Medium, May 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418151326/https://medium.com/@Limkos_Stamp/dome-mosque-a1bbe842c39e.
[63] Persona “Rob Lloys,” “Another wave of immigration to hit Europe as EU leaders admit they are powerless in Aleppo,” Medium, December 21, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155543/https://medium.com/@RobLloys/another-wave-of-immigration-to-hit-europe-as-eu-leaders-admit-they-are-powerless-in-aleppo-bcd03ffa4415.
[64] Persona “Ail Green,” Muslim wave is to cover the United Kingdom before referendum,” Medium, May 10, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418151527/https://medium.com/@AilGreen/muslim-wave-is-to-cover-the-united-kingdom-before-referendum-3a9fd5391e61.
[65] The tweet is archived at https://archive.vn/3fVWC.
[66] Dion Nissembaum, Emre Peker, and James Marson, “Turkey Shoots Down Russian Military Jet,” Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-shoots-down-jet-near-syria-border-1448356509.
[67] Katherine Costello, “Russia’s Use of Media and Information Operations in Turkey,” RAND Corporation, 2018, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE278.html.
[68] Persona “Infomaniac,” “True reasons of the recent attack on Su-24,” Medium, December 7, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143020/https://medium.com/@infomaniac/true-reasons-of-the-recent-attack-on-su-24-e0650adc3f8d; persona “Truthseeker,” “The US exposes ties between Turkey and Jabhat al-Nusra?”, Medium, February 12, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143458/https://medium.com/@truthseekerNew/the-us-exposes-ties-between-turkey-and-jabhat-al-nusra-ce063989414f; persona “Dusty L.A,” “Turkey was about to open second front vs Armenia,” Medium, April 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145657/https://medium.com/@DustyLA/turkey-was-about-to-open-second-front-vs-armenia-6a60fa6376ea.
[69] “WADA Statement: Independent Investigation confirms Russian State manipulation of the doping control process,” WADA, Juy 18, 2016, https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2016-07/wada-statement-independent-investigation-confirms-russian-state-manipulation-of.
[70] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Corruption in international sports supervisory authorities. Ban of meldonium is due to unfair competition between pharmaceutical companies,” blogspot.com, April 19, 2016, https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/04/corruption-in-international-sports.html.
[71] Persona “Politgraben,” “Korruption in WADA - Play True?” (“Corruption in WADA - play true?”), wordpress.com, April 22, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418150741/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/korruption-in-wada-play-true/.
[72] Persona “Ino-News,” “Всемирное антидопинговое сообщество попалось на коррупции” (“WADA caught in corruption”), via e-news.pro, April 22, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422234458/https://www.e-news.pro/news/110649-vsemirnoe-antidopingovoe-soobschestvo-popalos-na-korrupcii.html.
[73] Klement Piccard, “Carnival in Rio with US laboratories’ prescriptions: invisible doping and Zika virus,” Medium, July 22, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418153454/https://medium.com/@piccard/carnival-in-rio-with-us-laboratories-prescriptions-invisible-doping-and-zika-virus-87c19ea6ab34.
[74] Persona “amateur123,” “Independent Journalists: the new faces, though old methods. Who ‘throws dead cats on the table’ today?”, Medium, May 31, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20170115210538/https://medium.com/@amateur123/independent-journalists-the-new-faces-though-old-methods-d12c8741602f.
[75] Persona “Tom Sallee,” “The unfair competition,” Reddit, September 28, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418164002/https://www.reddit.com/r/antivirus/comments/72ywku/the_unfair_competition/.
[76] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “Продолжение охоты на ведьм или спасибо НАТО за рекламу” (“Continuation of the witch hunt, or thanks, NATO, for the advertisement”), livejournal.com, July 2, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418200629/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/53584.html.
[77] Ben Nimmo and Michael Sheldon, “Russian Op 3: The Blue Man and the Mole,” DFRLab, June 22, 2019, https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-op-3-the-blue-man-and-the-mole-3ba77b9eb955. For full disclosure, the lead author of the current paper also led the DFRLab’s original exposure of Secondary Infektion.
[78] Gianluca Mezzofiore, “Russia's best troll 'Jenna Abrams' is back with an incredible blog post about AI and the Matrix,” Mashable, November 9, 2017, https://mashable.com/2017/11/09/jenna-abrams-russian-troll-account-ai-matrix/.
[79] Casey Michel, “Russian trolling ahead of the midterm elections is a mixture of the weird and the pathetic,” ThinkProgress.org, November 6, 2018, https://thinkprogress.org/usaira-russian-trolling-ahead-of-the-midterm-elections-is-a-mixture-of-the-weird-and-the-pathetic-c64b0d120ae5/. The IRA site is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20181125143657/https://usaira.ru/.
[80] Persona “Robert Porter”, “EU Rejects Cooperation with Foreign Far-Right Forces”, playbuzz, October 23, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418184821/https://www.playbuzz.com/item/55cdcf37-d7c7-4a5b-847d-dbe218f89cbb.
[81] Persona “Stanislav Melanich”, “В погоне за грантами: 12 июня Навальный анонсировал несанкционированный митинг” ("Chasing grants: Navalny announces unsanctioned rally for 12 June"), newsland, June 6, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418194509/https://newsland.com/user/4297838887/content/meditsinskii-genotsid-po-ukrainski-kor-difteriia-ili-sama-reforma-unichtozhit-ukraintsev/6688826.
[82] Persona “Stanislav Melanich”, “Кремлевская марионетка” (“Kremlin puppet”), December 30, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134927/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/2014/12/30/.
[83] Persona “James Alkirby,” “Ukrainian view of the future of Russia,” Medium, August 31, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175046/https://medium.com/@alkirby/ukrainian-view-of-the-future-of-russia-dca036fe2177.
[84] Unattributed article, “Elections of Merkel - let the whole world wait,” homment.com, June 29, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418162244/https://homment.com/elections-of-Merkel-let-the-whole-world-wait.
[85] Persona “Josh Groll,” “Chancellor of Germany and female alcoholism,” Medium, April 10, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20191210170754/https://medium.com/@JoshGroll/chancellor-of-germany-and-female-alcoholism-2c756713a7e9.
[86] Persona “Wolfgang Sperling,” “Politics And Female Alcohol Addiciton,” BuzzFeed Community, March 20, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404115858/https://www.buzzfeed.com/wolfgangsperling/politics-and-female-alcohol-addiction-2vne1.
[87] Persona “Anonymous,” “Documents confirming that brothers Kaczynski are mentally retarded,” cyberguerrilla.org, April 12, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160907184513/https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/documents-confirming-that-brothers-kaczynski-are-mentally-retarded/.
[88] Persona “Stan Giklems,” “Anonymous. The Kaczynski brothers’ genetic mutation revealed! BREAKING!,” Vimeo, April 19, 2016, https://vimeo.com/163382203.
[89] Persona “Mal O,” “The European Commission: Conduct official and public medical examination of Jaroslaw Kaczynski,” avaaz.org, February 24, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418203620/https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/The_European_Commission_Conduct_official_and_public_medical_examination_of_Jaroslaw_Kaczynski/.
[90] Persona “doubtingsteven”, “Saakashvili did not receive Hahn's assurances that 'interim' Groysman's Cabinet resigns in 2017…”, blogspot.com, May 19, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418151904/http://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/05/saakashvili-did-not-receive-hahns.html.
[91] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny”, “Саакашвили и Яценюк: борьба кланов” (“Saakashvili and Yatsenyuk: the battle of the clans”), livejournal.com, December 24, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143252/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/48082.html.
[92] Persona "dhortone,” “Who's Your Boss, Dalia Grybauskaite?", buzzfeed.com, 3 December 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404071513/https://www.buzzfeed.com/dhortone/whos-your-boss-dalia-grybauskaite-3p8ia
[93] “Case of Abu Zubaydah v Lithuania,” European Court of Human Rights, May 31, 2018, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#_Toc515265916.
[94] Persona "Steve Eriksson", "Lithuania Blocks the Sensational Investigation into a Torture Issue in the EU," medium.com, 11 October 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404102152/https://medium.com/@Eriksson_91947/lithuania-blocks-the-sensational-investigation-into-a-torture-issue-in-the-eu-80f8284e8f49
[95] Persona "SteveEriksson", President of Lithuania conceals from the UN and the ECHR the names of those organised tortures of prisoners," medium.com, 8 October 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404102229/https://medium.com/@steveeriksson/president-of-lithuania-conceals-from-the-un-and-the-echr-the-names-of-those-who-organized-tortures-2b328db9d1fc
[96] Persona "Steveriks", "Lithuania Blocks the Sensational Investigation into a Torture Issue in the EU," reddit.com, 11 October 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404102214/https://www.reddit.com/r/lithuania/comments/9n82ub/lithuania_blocks_the_sensational_investigation/
[97] "Sputnik’s Disinformation as if Former Lithuanian President was KBG Agent," mythdetector.ge, https://www.mythdetector.ge/en/myth/sputniks-disinformation-if-former-lithuanian-president-was-kbg-agent
[98] “От тайного агента КГБ до феминистки: карьера Дали Грибаускайте” (“From secret KGB agent to feminist: Dalia Grybauskaite’s career”), Sputnik, September 25, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxmRSdjRLcI&feature=emb_title.
[99] Persona “andrei_kurpskiy,” “Чего боится агент «Магнолия?»”, LiveJournal, June 11, 2015, https://andrei-kurpskiy.livejournal.com/69315.html#cutid1.
[100] Persona "Max Bromberg", "ADIEU, KGB! FLIEHT DALIA GRYBAUSKAITĖ VOR IHRER KGB-VERGANGENHEIT?" (“Adieu, KGB! Is Dalia Grybauskaite fleeing from her KGB past?”) wordpress.com, 15 April 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200411081551/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/adieu-kgb-flieht-dalia-grybauskaite-vor-ihrer-kgb-vergangenheit/
[101] See Presentation by Camille Francois at CyberWarCon, Washington DC, November 2018: https://www.cyberwarcon.com/false-leaks
[102] Indictment 1:18-cr-00215-ABJ, “United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyshko et al.,” US Department of Justice, July 13, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download.
[103] Owen Gibson, “Russia accused of ‘state-sponsored doping’ as Wada calls for athletics ban,” The Guardian, November 9, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/09/wada-iaaf-russia-dick-pound-banned.
[104] “WADA Statement: Independent Investigation confirms Russian State manipulation of the doping control process,” WADA, July 18, 2016, https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2016-07/wada-statement-independent-investigation-confirms-russian-state-manipulation-of.
[105] Ben Nimmo, “#PutinAtWar: WADA Hack Shows Kremlin Full-Spectrum Approach,” DFRLab, October 14, 2018, https://medium.com/dfrlab/putinatwar-wada-hack-shows-kremlin-full-spectrum-approach-21dd495f2e91.
[106] See www.io-archive.org for posts made by the Russian IRA on the #dopingleaks campaign.
[107] Persona “EnniLowre,” “Corruption in international sports supervisory authorities. Ban of meldonium is due to unfair competition between pharmaceutical companies,” topix.com, April 15, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20170802165139/http://www.topix.com/forum/sports/T5KD8MKFTICE78AT7. The same article was posted by operation persona “Steven Laack” on April 19, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20200424111459/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/04/corruption-in-international-sports.html. The Russian version was posted by persona “Ino-News” on April 21: https://maxpark.com/community/politic/content/5190995. The German edition was posted by persona “PolitGraben” on April 22: https://web.archive.org/web/20200418150704/https://de.indymedia.org/node/9139.
[108] Both are preserved online at https://web.archive.org/web/20170802165140/https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/04/15/wada/wada.pdf.
[109] The CPJ confirmed that they were approached by a journalist from Russian state channel Россия 24 to confirm whether the letter was fake, but there is no record of the channel running a story on it, a welcome sign of journalistic professionalism.
[110] See for example Christoph Winterbach, Lukas Eberle, and Raphael Buschmann, “How Some US Athletes Obtain Permits for Banned Medication,” Spiegel, December 1, 2016, https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/hack-by-fancy-bears-of-anti-doping-agency-usada-a-1124020.html. The authors based their report on “email communication between several employees of the American anti-doping agency USADA which was provided to the newsmagazine SPIEGEL by the hacker group Fancy Bears.”
[111] Jean-Baptiste Jeangene-Vilmer, “The Macron Leaks Operation: A Post-Mortem,” Atlantic Council, June 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Macron_Leaks_Operation-A_Post-Mortem.pdf. For transparency, some of the research quoted in Jeangene-Vilmer’s paper was the work of Ben Nimmo, the lead author of the current report.
[112] Persona “DreuxVachon,” “Emmanuel Macron: a new hope of migrants in Europe?”, Medium, March 16, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160806/https://medium.com/@DreuxVachon/emmanuel-macron-a-new-hope-of-migrants-in-europe-b6d07e0a111b. We are grateful to Quora for bringing this post to our attention.
[113] Persona “Sebastian Doyon,” Quora, March 16, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160801/https://www.quora.com/profile/Sebastien-Doyon.
[114] Unattributed article, survivefrance.com, March 16, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160814/https://www.survivefrance.com/t/emmanuel-macron-a-new-hope-of-migrants-in-europe/15314.
[115] Persona “Hugh Riel,” politicalforum.com and politicsforum.co.uk, March 16, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160819/http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/emmanuel-macron-a-new-hope-of-migrants-in-europe.499828/ and http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160827/http://www.politicsforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=51064.
[116] Persona “Nicole Roux,” “Emmanuel Macron: Neuer Traum der europäischen Migranten?” (“Emmanuel Macron: New dream of European migrants?,” meine-news.de, March 17, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160835/https://www.meine-news.de/aschbach/c-politik/emmanuel-macron-neuer-traum-der-europaeischen-migranten_a19842; geschichte-wissen.de, March 17, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160840/https://geschichte-wissen.de/foren/viewtopic.php?t=5691.
[117] Persona “Gerard,” “Garder le visage de l’Europe,” politicien.fr, March 14, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160750/http://gerard.politicien.fr/2017/03/14/garder-le-visage-de-leurope/. The headline appears to be an attempt at a literal translation of the English “Saving Europe’s face.”
[118] Persona “StPatrick,” “Macron moves in the Élysée Palace on shoulders of migrants and jihadists,” Reddit, April 20, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200318192454/https://www.reddit.com/r/eupolitics/comments/66gnnb/macron_moves_in_the_%C3%A9lys%C3%A9e_palace_on_shoulders_of/; defendingthetruth.com, April 20, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161140/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/macron-moves-in-the-%C3%89lys%C3%A9e-palace-on-shoulders-of-migrants-and-jihadists.60472/; politicsforum.org, April 20, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161145/http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=168877&sid=d395f44fff9b397979b01a2ccab4e3f8; homment.com, April 20, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161147/https://homment.com/Macron-moves-in-the-Elysee-Palace-on-shoulders-of-migrants-and-jihadists.
[119] For example, persona “Дмитрий Разумов” (“Dmitriy Razumov”), “Макрон въедет в Елисейский дворец на плечах мигрантов и джихадистов” (“Macron will ride into the Elysee Palace on the backs of migrants and jihadists”), cont.ws, April 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161320/https://cont.ws/@razumow/598048; fishki.net, April 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161228/https://fishki.net/anti/2276742-makron-vedet-v-elisejskij-dvorec-na-plechah-migrantov-i-dzhihadistov.html.
[120] Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer, “The ‘Macron Leaks’ Operation: A Post-Mortem,” Atlantic Council, June 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Macron_Leaks_Operation-A_Post-Mortem.pdf.
[121] Persona “Ritterc, “Macron Triumphant: Macro-lies of Micro-victory”, 6 May 2017, http://archive.is/mHxb6. We are grateful to Reddit for first exposing this post as being part of Secondary Infektion.
[122] See www.io-archive.org
[123] Persona “Josef Hashever,”, “Hilla the Hun in her chase for the Genesis Prize,” WordPress, November 26, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200424112628/https://joeshever.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/hilla-the-hun-in-her-chase-of-the-genesis-prize/. The same persona posted the same story on beforeitsnews.com on the same day: http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143028/https://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2015/11/hilla-the-hun-in-her-chase-of-the-genesis-prize-2491430.html.
[124] Persona “HJHJ,” “Sponsors of Islamists invest into Hillary,” Medium, May 6, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200418151334/https://medium.com/@HJHJHJHJ/sponsors-of-islamists-invest-into-hillary-2cb40e2e1c90.
[125] Persona “climber,” “Electoral mockery in the United States: a view from within,” Medium, June 7, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200418152645/https://medium.com/@climberud/electoral-mockery-in-the-united-states-a-view-from-within-6972fe326cd.
[126] Persona “Douklan Oisi,” “China compensates Brexit by support of Clinton,” Quora, July 20, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418153427/https://www.quora.com/What-will-be-Hillary-Clintons-China-policy-if-she-becomes-the-president/answer/Douklan-Oisi.
[127] Unnamed author, “Hitting Trump and Sanders with an e-mail cluster all at the same time,” homment.com, July 27, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200418153520/https://homment.com/Hitting-Trump-and-Sanders-with-an-e-mail-cluster-all-at-the-same-time. The article argued that “you really can’t take literally the theory about the Russian hackers,” in a rare direct reference to other Russian operations.
[128] Persona “George Umber,” “Clinton fits on the Roosevelt's wheelchair?” Medium, August 10, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200418153554/https://medium.com/@GeorgeUmber/clinton-fits-on-the-roosevelts-wheelchair-36b40da7d16b.
[129] Unnamed author, “Hillary Clinton, a killer (proclaimed) above the law,” homment.com, October 31, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154348/https://homment.com/Hillary-Clinton-a-killer-proclaimed-above-the-law.
[130] Persona “Петр Калюжный,” “Хиллари Клинтон – убийца, объявленная вне закона” (“Hillary Clinton, a killer proclaimed outside the law”), November 2, 2016, on korrespondent.net, https://blogs.korrespondent.net/blog/politics/3766265/ and dosug.md, https://dosug.md/ru/publication/14327/, among others.
[131] Persona “Farah Al-mazik,” “Stop HIllary Clinton’s Aggression,” thepetitionsite.com, October 27, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418203502/https://www.thepetitionsite.com/935/098/058/stop-hillary-clintons-aggression/.
[132] Persona “Josefever,” “Germany’s staying secretly supportive of the Turkish Kurds,” beforeitsnews.com, December 24, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200409120834/https://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/germanys-staying-secretly-supportive-of-the-turkish-kurds-2473062.html
[133] Homment, "The effect of the referendum in Turkey: urged by Gülen followers, Germany to impose sanctions on Ankara", homment.com, May 11, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404081117/https://homment.com/the-effect-of-the-referendum-in-turkey
[134] Persona "alexdudek", "The UN Security Council Resolution: Germany will be obliged to pay Poland for occupation,” Homment.com, December 10, 2018http://web.archive.org/web/20200404102355/https://homment.com/jxfUAkYph61dHstauwGu
[135] Persona “Politgraben”, "Der Islam gehört zu Deutschand nicht!" (“Islam doesn’t belong in Germany!”), politgraben.wordpress.com, April 28, 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20200404100150/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/der-islam-gehort-zu-deutschland-nicht/
[136] Persona “Politgraben”, "Wird Deutschland zum Hauptziel syrischer Flüchtlinge?" (“Will Germany become the main destination for Syrian refugees?”), politgraben.wordpress.com, September 3, 2015 https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/wird-deutschland-zum-hauptziel-syrischer-fluechtlinge/
[137]Persona “Politgraben”, "FLÜCHTLINGE BRINGEN NACH EUROPA TOD" (“REFUGEES BRING DEATH TO EUROPE!”), politgraben.wordpress.com, September 15, 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20190205023851/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/wird-deutschland-zum-hauptziel-syrischer-fluechtlinge/
[138] Persona “Politgraben”, "Drang nach Osten 2.0” (“The push to the East 2.0”), politgraben.wordpress.com", May 7, 2015 http://web.archive.org/web/20200404095246/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/drang-nach-osten-2-0/
[139] Persona “Politgraben”, "NRW: KRIEGSWAFFEN-LAGER VON ISLAMISTEN AUSGEHOBEN" (“NRW: ISLAMIST WEAPONS CACHE DUG UP”), politgraben.wordpress.com, June 22, 2016.http://web.archive.org/web/20200404083639/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/nrw-kriegswaffen-lager-von-islamisten-ausgehoben/
[140] Persona “Politgraben”, "AUF VERLANGEN VON NRW-INNENMINISTERIUM" (“AT THE REQUEST OF THE NRW INTERIOR MINISTRY”), politgraben.wordpress.com, February 12, 2016.https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/auf-verlangen-von-nrw-innenministerium/
[141] Persona “Dariusz Pawlak”, "Genocide strikes relations between Ukraine and Poland… again", medium.com, January 18, 2018http://web.archive.org/web/20200404111524/https://medium.com/@darpawlak/genocide-strikes-relations-between-ukraine-and-poland-again-1c1085fec1f9
[142] Persona “Alexdudek”, "The UN Security Council Resolution: Germany will be obliged to pay Poland for occupation", homment.com, December 10, 2018http://web.archive.org/web/20200404102355/https://homment.com/jxfUAkYph61dHstauwGu
[143] Unattributed article, "Is Poland to be punished for sabotage of the EU decisions on Ukraine?", homment.com, June 7, 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20200410073011/https://homment.com/Is-Poland-to-be-punished-for-sabotage-of-the-EU-decisions-on-Ukraine
[144] Persona “Altan Yavuz,” "Poland Will Support Turkey's Accession to the EU, medium.com, September 7, 2017 http://web.archive.org/web/20200404105206/https://medium.com/@AltanYavuz/poland-will-support-turkeys-accession-to-the-eu-83ab8ac17cf3
[145] Persona “Carole Juanard,” "Poland Demands Reparations From the Former Soviet Republics For the Aggression Of the Red Army", medium.com, August 22, 2018 http://web.archive.org/web/20200404103152/https://medium.com/@juanard/poland-demands-reparations-from-the-former-soviet-republics-for-the-aggression-of-the-red-army-cab00f5ee858
[146] "Lithuanian Horizons: with Dalya for without her", groundreport.com, 4 July, 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20200404101009/https://www.groundreport.com/lithuanian-eu-horizons-dalya-without/
[147] Persona "Josef Hashever", "Lithuanian ‘Nuremberg’ reached a dead end", wordpress.com, 9 June 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404080002/https://joeshever.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/lithuanian-nuremberg-reached-a-dead-end/
[148] Persona "El Vilar", Latvia’s ruling party: unity of government, secret services and crime, medium.com, 4 October 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404111836/https://medium.com/@elvilar/latvias-ruling-party-unity-of-government-secret-services-and-crime-fd0275abb6fa
[149] Persona "saiso", “Latvia as the cyber bastion of NATO", homment.com, November, 20, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404073156/https://homment.com/awVtJJ8cbPXXjrcWEsoI
[150] Persona "Stanislav Melanich", Много шпрот и мало водки. Прибалтийский вариант, livejournal.com, June 15, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404020229/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/2015/06/15/
[151] Insikt Group, "Intent to Infekt: ‘Operation Pinball’ Tactics Reminiscent of ‘Operation Secondary Infektion,', recordedfuture.com, April 8, 2020, https://www.recordedfuture.com/operation-pinball-tactics/
[152] Persona "mazumishasy", "Подарок для Польши: Украина собирается переориентировать Хмельницкую АЭС на экспорт" (“Gift for Poland: Ukraine plans to switch the Khmelnitsky NPP to export”), stena.ee, November 27, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404003115/https://www.stena.ee/blog/podarok-dlya-polshi-ukraina-sobiraetsya-pereorientirovat-hmelnitskuyu-aes-na-eksport
[153] Julian Borger, Patrick Wintour and Heather Stewart, “Western allies expel scores of Russian diplomats over Skripal attack,” The Guardian, March 27, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/26/four-eu-states-set-to-expel-russian-diplomats-over-skripal-attack.
[154] Persona “Matt Porter,” “Spain’s Intel: Remainers Plot to Assassinate Boris Johnson,” Medium, August 12, 2018, https://archive.is/2CgqR.
[155] Persona “Will Couch,” “Following Brexit is a new fight for United Ireland,” Medium, April 23, 2019, https://archive.is/iQ44c.
[156] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Being friendly the American way. The USA was spying on the British Royal Family,” blogspot.com, April 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200424111520/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/04/being-friendly-american-way-usa-was.html. Tweeted the same day at https://twitter.com/StevenLaack/status/717640052034023426.
[157] Persona “Chris Woods,” “UK’s GCHQ to support Democrats during the 2018 midterms,” scoop.it, August 3, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200424111322/https://www.scoop.it/u/chris-woods-4.
[158] Unattributed article, “Mayday! Theresa May: a mortician or a savior?”, homment.com, July 28, 2016, https://homment.com/mfuanmen2t.
[159] Persona “Steven Laack,” “The British Lion makes a come-back,” scoop.it, January 31, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143440/https://www.scoop.it/topic/the-world-war-iii-just-signs-or-final-diagnosis/p/4059068800/2016/01/31/the-british-lion-makes-a-come-back.
[160] Persona “Mitchell Harris,” USA and UK: policy of the biggest fraud,” Facebook, April 12, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404073616/https://www.facebook.com/OccupyUnmasked/posts/1848654055165283.
[161] Persona “Matt Porter,” “Spain’s Intel: Remainers Plot to Assassinate Boris Johnson,” Medium, August 12, 2018, https://archive.is/2CgqR.
[162] Persona “Will Couch,” “Following Brexit is a new fight for United Ireland,” Medium, April 23, 2019, https://archive.is/iQ44c.
[163] Persona “Addie Ukip,” “The greatest fraud of the century: referendum in Great Britain,” Medium, May 25, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200424111350/https://medium.com/@AddieUkip/the-greatest-fraud-of-the-century-referendum-in-great-britain-44083d66bbee; persona “Steven Laack,” same headline, blogspot.com, May 27, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200424111345/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-greatest-fraud-of-century.html.
[164] Ben Nimmo, “UK Trade Leaks,” Graphika, December 2, 2019, https://graphika.com/TradeLeaks; Jack Stubbs, “Leak of papers before UK election raises 'specter of foreign influence': experts,” Reuters, December 2, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election-foreign/leak-of-papers-before-uk-election-raises-specter-of-foreign-influence-experts-idUSKBN1Y620A.
[165] “U/worstnerd,” “Suspected Campaign from Russia on Reddit,” Reddit, December 6, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/.
[166] Persona "John Becker", "Georgia demonstrates lack of readiness for its membership in the EU and NATO", medium.com, October 10, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200315172105/https://medium.com/@beckerjo/georgia-demonstrates-lack-of-readiness-for-its-membership-in-the-eu-and-nato-30813385cc0a
[167] Persona "Stanislav Melanich", "Реформа МВД с грузинским душком"(“Interior Ministry reform with a Georgian scent”), livejournal.com, December 17, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200410144016/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/47564.html
[168] Persona "Stanislav Melanich", "Революция в Армении – подготовка сдачи Нагорного Карабаха" (“Revolution in Armenia: preparations to surrender Nagorno-Karabakh”), cont.ws, April 30, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200411045816/https://cont.ws/@stasmelanich/931652
[169] "Arménie: échec de la "color revolution", l'USAID insulte son laquais", wikistrike.com, September 3, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200411050113/http://www.wikistrike.com/2015/09/armenie-echec-de-la-color-revolution-l-usaid-insulte-son-laquais.html
[170] Persona "Semeon Tozz", "What's up in Armenia?", medium.com, May 12, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200411052351/https://medium.com/@semeontozz/whats-up-in-armenia-41231f195c15
[171] Persona "Max Bromberg", "Schweden ist an Brüsseler Anschlagen schuld" (“Sweden to blame for Brussels attacks”), politgraben.wordpress.com, March 30, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404102110/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/schweden-ist-an-bruesseler-anschlaegen-schuld/
[172] Persona "Olle", "Fredsreglering genom skrapning av terrorceller.Islamiska staten väntar Sveriges hjälp" (“Making peace by creating terror cells. IS expects Sweden’s help”), svenskpress.se, March 23, 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20170107203629/http://www.svenskpress.se/papers/pressbladet/articles/view/fredsreglering-genom-skapning-av-terrorceller-islamiska-staten-vantar
[173] Persona "andrewhobbs," "Another "Mueller Commission" Is Suggested To Be Created in Sweden", homment.com, November 14, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404104202/https://homment.com/WD33RUuytNCkIWOZtfo3
[174] Persona “Josef Hashever”, beforeitsnews.com, May 26, 2016, "Royal https://web.archive.org/save/https://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2016/05/royal-democracy-will-there-be-a-referendum-on-ukraines-eu-association-agreement-in-sweden-2604958.html
[175] Persona “George Kobzaru”, “Sverige kunde förebygga terrorattacker i Bryssel" (“Sweden could have prevented terrorist attacks in Brussels”), pressbladet.se, March 29, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404084318/http://www.pressbladet.se/articles/view/sverige-kunde-forebygga-terrorattacker-i-bryssel
[176] Arri Gibs, "Sweden could have prevented the terrorist attacks in Brussels!", youtube.com, March 28, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404084240/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-2dMCIgXP4
[177] Persona "Josef Hashever", "Peace Settlement Through Creation of Terrorist Cells. ISIS Expects Aid From Sweden," indymedia.org.uk, March 24, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200404102028/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2016/03/524628.html
[178] "Peace Settlement Through Creation of Terrorist Cells. ISIS Expects Aid From Sweden," newsparticipation.com, March 24, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200410133233/https://newsparticipation.com/peace-settlement-through-creation-of-terrorist-cells-daesh-expects-aid-of-sweden/
[179] Secondary Infektion’s use of Twitter was a deviation from its normal behavior, in that it used the same accounts repeatedly between mid-2014 and mid-2016. These accounts shared a significant proportion of non-original content and reposted individual Secondary Infektion stories repeatedly, occasionally dozens of times per story. Representing the operation’s Twitter usage by individual tweets over-represents the volume of the operation’s Twitter activity compared with its activity on other platforms. For that reason, Twitter is not represented in the comparative graphs.
[180] “Anonymous,” “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize,” cyberguerrilla.org, May 24, 2015, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20150530204435/https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/united-states-to-nominate-ukrainian-president-poroshenko-for-a-nobel-peace-prize/.
[181] Persona “Kries Larsson,” “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize,” YouTube, May 25, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140609/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2otXTrVJ0g.
[182] Unnamed poster, “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize,” homment.com, May 27, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140715/https://homment.com/ukrainenobel.
[183] Persona “Taurus5”, “Friedensnobelpreis 2015 geht an... Poroschenko?,” ask1.org, May 29, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140917/https://www.ask1.org/threads/friedensnobelpreis-2015-%E2%80%93-bin-schockiert.17862/.
[184] Persona “Politgraben,” “Friedensnobelpreis 2015 geht an... Poroschenko?” (“Nobel Peace Prize goes to… Poroshenko?”), de.indymedia.org, May 28, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140745/https://de.indymedia.org/node/4650.
[185] Persona “Ino-news”, “США номинируют Порошенко на Нобелевскую премию мира” (“USA nominates Poroshenko for Nobel Peace Prize”), cont.ws, May 28, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140817/https://cont.ws/@ino-news/90420.
[186] Persona “Ino-news”, “США номинируют Порошенко на Нобелевскую премию мира” (“USA nominates Poroshenko for Nobel Peace Prize”), livejournal, May 28, 2015. The account has been purged, but the article is reproduced here: http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140831/https://x-true.info/19848-ssha-nominiruyut-poroshenko-na-nobelevskuyu-premiyu-mira.html.
[187] Persona “Peter Blom,” “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” Medium, June 4, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418170727/https://medium.com/@peterblom_75128/silence-commanded-people-in-sweden-are-incensed-by-londons-pressure-on-scientists-1097d5b19314.
[188] Persona “Peterbloms,” “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” BuzzFeed forum, June 4, 2018, https://www.buzzfeed.com/peterbloms/silence-commanded-people-in-sweden-are-incensed-b-3hdos.
[189] Persona “Peterblom,” “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” thestudentroom.co.uk, June 4, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422215308/https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5409006.
[190] Persona “Peter Blom,” “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” scoop.it, June 4, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422215529/https://www.scoop.it/topic/europe-by-peter-blom/p/4098264908/2018/06/04/silence-commanded-people-in-sweden-are-incensed-by-london-s-pressure-on-scientists.
[191] Persona “Peterblom,” “Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” defendingthetruth.com, June 4, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422215713/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/silence-commanded-people-in-sweden-are-incensed-by-londons-pressure-on-scientists.66513/.
[192] Guest user, ““Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” homment.com, June 4, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422215833/https://homment.com/no8ixNupbU355pUakRag.
[193] Persona “Tiagorivas”, “La indignación en Suecia por la presión de Londres sobre los científicos” (“Indignation in Sweden over London’s pressure on scientists”), globedia.com, June 5, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422220037/http://bo.globedia.com/indignacion-suecia-presion-londres-cientificos.
[194] Persona “Tiago Rivas,” ““La indignación en Suecia por la presión de Londres sobre los científicos,” burbuja.info, June 5, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422220046/https://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/threads/la-indignacion-en-suecia-por-la-presion-de-londres-sobre-los-cientificos.1040375/.
[195] Persona “ДРИЧАК МИХАЙЛО”, “Наказано мовчати: в Швеції обурені тиском Лондона на вчених” (“Ordered to be silent: Swedes angry with London’s pressure on scientists,”) korrespodent.net, June 21, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422220430/https://blogs.korrespondent.net/blog/world/3982646/.
[196] Persona “Михайло Дричак,” “Наказано мовчати: в Швеції обурені тиском Лондона на вчених,” pero.org.ua, June 21, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422220421/https://pero.org.ua/polityka/nakazano-movchaty-v-shvetsiyi-obureni-tyskom-londona-na-vchenyh/.
[197] Persona “drichakmikh,” “Наказано мовчати: в Швеції обурені тиском Лондона на вчених”, blog.i.ua, June 21, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422220416/http://blog.i.ua/user/10180331/.
[198] Persona “OliverrStonne,” “MI6 Operative On Anti-Trump Campaign,” Buzzfeed Community, January 20, 2017, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20191214150229/https://www.buzzfeed.com/oliverrstonne/mi6-operative-on-anti-trump-campaign-2sdhe.
[199] Persona “Pierre Buisson,” “Buzzfeed impute la paternité du faux rapport compromettant sur Trump au MI6” (“Buzzfeed attributes the birth of the fake compromising report on Trump to MI6”), actu-politique.info, January 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155920/https://actu-politique.info/viewtopic.php?t=18786.
[200] Persona “Peter Kaufman,” “Buzzfeed schreibt MI-6 die Autorschaft des fake kompromittierenden Materials über Trump zu” (“Buzzfeed attributes the authorship of the fake compromising material on Trump to MI6), meine-news.de, January 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155941/https://www.meine-news.de/boellstein/c-politik/buzzfeed-schreibt-mi-6-die-autorschaft-des-fake-kompromittierenden-materials-ueber-trump-zu_a18716.
[201] This also echoes the trajectory of the Russian IRA. See Phil Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly, and Camille Francois, "The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018," Computational Propaganda Research Project, Oxford Internet Institute, December 2018 https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/ira-political-polarization/
[202] Persona “Aok Priz,” “Savchenko is the one to replace Ban ki-Moon!”, Reddit, June 8, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418153302/https://www.reddit.com/r/UnitedNations/comments/4rtuw8/savchenko_is_the_one_to_replace_ban_kimoon/?ref=readnext.
[203] Persona “Will Benton,” “The US is concerned about the influx of Chinese spies,” Medium, August 16, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418172544/https://medium.com/@willbenton_22335/the-us-is-concerned-about-the-influx-of-chinese-spies-ff32414b367d.
[204] Persona “jalindner,” “USA sind um den Zustrom von chinesischen Spionen besorgt” (“USA concerned by the influx of Chinese spies”), chinaseite.de, 28 June 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418174700/https://forum.chinaseite.de/viewtopic.php?t=33153.
[205] Search term “USA in Chinese cobweb,” Google search, April 7, 2020, https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB862FR862&biw=1440&bih=718&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A4%2F1%2F2018%2Ccd_max%3A4%2F15%2F2018&ei=jGWMXsmlD7XuxgOH3JSwBA&q=site%3Astratfor.com+%22USA+in+Chinese+cobweb%22&oq=site%3Astratfor.com+%22USA+in+Chinese+cobweb%22&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQA0oMCBcSCDExLTk4Zzg4SgsIGBIHMTEtNGcyMlCVyQJYgqIDYLeoA2gAcAB4AIABeogBhxKSAQQyMi40mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjJm_3DnNboAhU1t3EKHQcuBUY4HhDh1QMIDA&uact=5.
[206] Pesona “Will Benton”, “The US is concerned about the influx of Chinese spies,” Medium, August 16, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418172544/https://medium.com/@willbenton_22335/the-us-is-concerned-about-the-influx-of-chinese-spies-ff32414b367d.
[207] Persona “willbenton,” “The US is concerned about the influx of Chinese spies,” cssforum.com.pk, August 16, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418172548/http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-compulsory-subjects/current-affairs/120861-us-concerned-about-influx-chinese-spies.html.
[208] As of April 21, 2020, the link was still visible at https://i.imgur.com/EZCtdo6.jpg; it is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20200422221631/https://i.imgur.com/EZCtdo6.jpg.
[209] Persona “paulrossa,” “'Hard Brexit' to be rewarded by favourable trade deal and a new PM,” homment.com, 18 September 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418181505/https://homment.com/mFJwD0WX6VGMptz2xYGp. The screenshot is preserved at http://web.archive.org/web/20200418133728/https://i.imgur.com/pn5MVzz.jpg.
[210] Search term “Giuliani: Britain gets the,” Reddit. Search made on April 7, 2020. https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=Giuliani%3A%20Britain%20gets%20the.
[211] Search term “Giuliani: Britain gets the,” Google. Search made on April 7, 2020. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Giuliani%3A+Britain+gets+the%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB862FR862&oq=%22Giuliani%3A+Britain+gets+the%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.1183j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
[212] Persona “Norman Nash,” “OSCE ODIHR: 3.15 million Germany's new citizens ensured the CDU victory,” Urban75.net, October 3, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200521154328/https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/osce-odihr-3-15-million-germanys-new-citizens-ensured-the-cdu-victory.354753/.
[213] His biography can be viewed at https://www.osce.org/node/330441.
[214] “Germany, Parliamentary Elections, 24 September 2017: Final Report,” OSCE ODIHR, November 27, 2017, https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/germany/358936.
[215] Twitter search term https://twitter.com/search?data-lazy-src=typd&q=from%3Amichael_g_link%20Projektbericht%20der%20OSZE.
[216] Persona “chavezserg,” “Servicios de inteligencia de España: se prepara el atentado contra Boris Johnson” (“Spanish intelligence services: Assassination attempt against Boris Johnson is being prepared”) globedia.com, August 8, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418182645/https://i.iheart.com/v3/re/assets.brands/5e5ea6a57a1102921ef48ac2?ops=resize(192,0).
[217] Persona “Peter Blom,” “ Silence commanded. People in Sweden are incensed by London’s pressure on scientists,” Medium, June 4, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418170727/https://medium.com/@peterblom_75128/silence-commanded-people-in-sweden-are-incensed-by-londons-pressure-on-scientists-1097d5b19314.
[218] His resume is on the Swedish government website at https://www.government.se/492c00/globalassets/government/dokument/forsvarsdepartementet/nya-cv/cv-jan-olof-lind-eng-officiellt-foto.pdf.
[219] Persona “John Becker,” “Georgia demonstrates lack of readiness for its membership in the EU and NATO,” Medium, October 10, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418182740/https://medium.com/@beckerjo/georgia-demonstrates-lack-of-readiness-for-its-membership-in-the-eu-and-nato-30813385cc0a.
[220] Dominic Grieve, “It’s time for MPs to put country before party,” Prospect, August 19, 2018, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/dominic-grieve-country-before-party.
[221] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Genocide of ‘non-Ukrainians’ on approval of the EU,” indymedia.org.uk, April 20, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418135637/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/04/520191.html.
[222] Nuland has been a notable target of Russian information operations, most notoriously when unknown agents intercepted a phone call she made in 2014 in which she was less than complimentary about the European Union’s role in Ukraine. The recording was published by Russian officials. See Mark Hosenball, “Leaked call on Ukraine made on unencrypted cellphones -U.S. officials,” Reuters, February 7, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-phonecall-idUSL2N0LC1E120140207.
[223] Anonymous poster, “Ukraine is trying to frustrate referendum in the Netherlands,” first posted on cyberguerrilla.org, March 24, 2016, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20161118160559/https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/ukraine-is-trying-to-frustrate-referendum-in-the-netherlands/. Operation Secondary Infektion regularly posted on cyberguerrilla.org and pretended to belong to the “Anonymous” hacker movement.
[224] The tweet is online at https://twitter.com/n_jaresko/status/714500546405773315.
[225] Persona “Werner Holt,” “Belagerung von Deutschland: USA und Polen führen einen Informationskrieg” (“Siege of Germany: Poland and the USA are waging an information war”), meinbezirk.at, April 24, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200409121649/https://www.meinbezirk.at/steinfeld/c-politik/belagerung-von-deutschland-usa-und-polen-fuehren-einen-informationskrieg_a3346260.
[226] Ben Nimmo, Eto Buziashvili and Michael Sheldon, “Russian Op. 6: EU Elections,” DFRLab, June 22, 2016, https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-op-6-eu-elections-892c6b5fecb7.
[227] The tweets are archived at https://archive.vn/wip/OryVS, https://archive.vn/W5z5M, and https://archive.vn/AAeIv.
[228] Persona “Rachel Cross Voddo,” Reddit, January 23, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200404112138/https://www.reddit.com/user/RachelCrossVoddo/.
[229] Persona “OliverrStonne”, “MI6 Agent on anti-Trump campaign,” Buzzfeed Community, January 20, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20170204041523/https://www.buzzfeed.com/oliverrstonne/mi6-operative-on-anti-trump-campaign-2sdhe.
[230] Persona “Friso Fischer,” Facebook, January 27, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100015062384380.
[231] Persona “Martin Karlsson,” Facebook, January 30, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/martin.karlsson.754365.
[232] The mein-suedhessen.de article has been removed, but copies remain elsewhere. See persona “Peter Kaufman,” “Buzzfeed schreibt MI-6 die Autorschaft des fake kompromittierenden Materials über Trump zu” (“Buzzfeed ascribes the authorship of the fake compromising material on Trump to Buzzfeed”), meine-news.de, January 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155941/https://www.meine-news.de/boellstein/c-politik/buzzfeed-schreibt-mi-6-die-autorschaft-des-fake-kompromittierenden-materials-ueber-trump-zu_a18716.
[233] Persona “NigusEeis,” “Litbuanian ‘Nuremberg’ reached a dead end,” Reddit, June 8, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418152733/https://www.reddit.com/r/lithuania/comments/4n55d8/lithuanian_nuremberg_reached_a_dead_end/.
[234] Persona “Taurus5,” “Friedensnobelpreis 2015 – bin schockiert!!” (“Nobel Peace Prize 2015 - I’m shocked!!2), ask1.org, May 29, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140917/https://www.ask1.org/threads/friedensnobelpreis-2015-%E2%80%93-bin-schockiert.17862/.
[235] Persona “jaimeibanez,” “SNBO de Ucrania: EE.UU. prepara protestas masivas en Ucrania y Rusia” (“Ukraine’s SNBO: U.S. preparing massive protests in Ukraine and Russia”), Reddit, December 21, 2017, https://www.reddit.com/r/spain/comments/7l8314/snbo_de_ucrania_eeuu_prepara_protestas_masivas_en/.
[236] Persona “cabradolfo,” “Salieron a la luz los nombres de los ucranianos "no enjuiciables" de la lista de Yovanovitch” (“The names of ‘unprosecutable’ Ukrainains from the Yovanovitch list came out”), Reddit, March 28, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/b6fxvc/salieron_a_la_luz_los_nombres_de_los_ucranianos/.
[237] User “David,” “United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize,” davidicke.com, May 28, 2015, https://www.davidicke.com/article/326777/united-states-to-nominate-ukrainian-president-poroshenko-for-a-nobel-peace-prize. The post was sourced to homment.com.
[238] As of April 9, 2020, the tweet was still live at https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/604007235606302720.
[239] Eric Zuesse, “U.S. Pressures Nobel Committee to Declare Ukraine’s President a Peace Prize Nominee, Leaked Letter,” globalresearch.ca, May 29, 2015, https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-pressures-nobel-committee-to-declare-ukraines-president-a-peace-prize-nominee-leaked-letter/5452448.
[240] Unattributed article, “Is Ukraine Pressuring US to Secure Nobel Peace Prize for Poroshenko?”, Sputnik, May 30, 2015, https://sputniknews.com/world/201505301022745342/.
[241] Unattributed article, “Ucraina ricatta USA per nomina Poroshenko al Nobel per la Pace” (“Ukraine blackmails USA to nominate Poroshenko for the Nobel Peace Prize”), Sputnik Italia, May 30, 2015, https://sputniknews.com/world/201505301022745342/.
[242] Unattributed article, “Poroşenko, Nobel Barış Ödülü'ne mi aday gösterilecek?” (“Will Poroshenko be nomiated for the Nobel Peace Prize?”), Sputnik Turkiye, June 1, 2015, https://tr.sputniknews.com/avrupa/201506011015760567/
[243] Unattributed article, “Нобель переворачивается в гробу: Порошенко номинируют на премию мира” (“Nobel turning in his grave: Poroshenko nominated for peace prize”), nahnews.org, May 29, 2015, https://nahnews.org/240784-nobel-perevorachivaetsya-v-grobu-poroshenko-nominirovali-na-premiyu-mira.
[244] Lawrence Alexander, “Open-Source Information Reveals Pro-Kremlin Web Campaign,” Global Voices, July 13, 2015, https://globalvoices.org/2015/07/13/open-source-information-reveals-pro-kremlin-web-campaign/.
[245] For example, persona “Jeannette Collette,” “Выборы Меркель — и пусть весь мир подождёт! AgoraVox, Франция” (“Merkel’s election, and the world can wait! - AgoraVox, France”), news-front.info, July 6, 2017, https://news-front.info/2017/07/06/vybory-merkel-i-pust-ves-mir-podozhdyot/.
[246] Patrick Beuth, Marc Brost, Peter Dausend, Steffen Dobbert und Götz Hamann, “War without blood,” Die Zeit, February 26, 2017, https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2017-02/bundestag-elections-fake-news-manipulation-russia-hacker-cyberwar.
[247] For an example of content sharing, see, “Из Украины начался массовый исход евреев” (“Mass exodus of Jews from Ukraine began”), politrussia.com, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418140412/https://politrussia.com/world/iskhod-evreev-iz-943/. The article was sourced to Secondary Infektion asset “Steven Laack.” The umbrella group is the “Patriot Media” group, created in October 2019 and online at https://mediapatriot.ru/
[248] Persona “Steven Laack,” “The USA used NGOs in former USSR republics to recruit Muslim students for ISIS,” blogspot, June 29, 2015, https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-usa-used-ngos-in-former-ussr.html.
[249] See above, note 204.
[250] Unattributed article, “Американский блогер: США вербовали в ИГИЛ в России и на Украине” (“American blogger: USA advertised for ISIS in Russia and Ukraine”), riafan.ru, July 2, 2015, https://riafan.ru/329308-amerikanskiy-bloger-ssha-verbovali-v-igil-v-rossii-i-na-ukraine.
[251] Ben Nimmo, “UK Trade Leaks,” Graphika, December 2, 2019, https://graphika.com/reports/UK-trade-leaks/.
[252] Kylie Maclellan and Elizabeth Piper, “Labour's Corbyn accuses Conservatives of offering up UK health service in U.S. talks,” Reuters, November 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election-labour-health/labours-corbyn-accuses-johnson-of-offering-up-uk-health-service-in-us-talks-idUSKBN1Y112P.
[253] Ben Nimmo, “UK Trade Leaks,” Graphika, December 2, 2019, https://graphika.com/reports/UK-trade-leaks/.
[254] User “u/worstnerd,” “Suspected campaign from Russia on Reddit,” Reddit, December 6, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/.
[255] Natasha Lomas, “Reddit links UK-US trade talk leak to Russian influence campaign,” Techcrunch, December 7, 2019, https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/07/reddit-links-uk-us-trade-talk-leak-to-russian-influence-campaign/.
[256] For an initial analysis of the account from June 2019, see Ben Nimmo and Michael Sheldon, “Russian Op 3: The Blue Man and the Mole,” DFRLab, June 22, 2019, https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-op-3-the-blue-man-and-the-mole-3ba77b9eb955.
[257] For an overview of recent information operations, including both foreign and domestic efforts, see the Facebook and Twitter archives of takedowns at https://about.fb.com/news/tag/coordinated-inauthentic-behavior/ and https://about.twitter.com/en_us/advocacy/elections-integrity.html#data.
[258] Ben Nimmo, “The Russians who exposed Russia’s trolls,” DFRLab, March 8, 2018, https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-russians-who-exposed-russias-trolls-72db132e3cd1.
[259] Persona “bloger_nasralny,” ““Харьков, вставай!” (“Kharkov, Arise!”), LiveJournal, February 26, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134044/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/2014/02/26/.
[260] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny”, “Перемога энергетическая” (“Energy Victory”), LiveJournal, December 27, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134914/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/17269.html.
[261] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “Peremogi добрались до Порошенка)” (“Peremogi reached Poroshenko)”), LiveJournal, February 6, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20180213162059/http://peremogi.livejournal.com/26353579.html.
[262] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny”, “Российская гражданская журналистика глазами интернет-пользователей” (“Russian citizen journalism in the eyes of internet users”), aftershock, July 8, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418170853/https://aftershock.news/?q=node%2F653000.
[263] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “Украина сегодня – это Россия 90-х” (“Ukraine today is Russia in the 90s”), politikus.ru, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418152544/https://politikus.ru/articles/politics/77399-ukraina-segodnya-eto-rossiya-90-h.html.
[264] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” Aftershock.news, created circa January 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200421171718/https://aftershock.news/?q=user/16791.
[265] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “Эбола в Украине” (“Ebola in Ukraine”), LiveJournal, October 23, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134357/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/2014/10/23/.
[266] Persona “Keral,” “TSRI lab: EBOLA officially registered in Ukraine,” curezone.org, undated, https://web.archive.org/web/20200421172404/https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=2214503. That post was referenced in a separate forum on October 26, 2014,. https://web.archive.org/web/20200421173022/http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?75801-EBOLA-HOAX-Only-First-Few-Cases-Were-Real-No-Pictures-from-This-Outbreak/page4
[267] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “Це зрада! или национальная песня: «а тому ли я дала?»” (“"This is treachery! Or the national hymn: "but did I put out to that?"), LiveJournal, December 3, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134602/https://bloger-nasralny.livejournal.com/2014/12/03/.
[268] The original link was https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/?p=21391.
[269] Persona “Anonymous Europe,” “Message to the citizens of European countries,” YouTube, December 1, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134525/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRiii1_PvA0.
[270] Persona “Ulrich Hartmann,” “Eine gruselige Zeit kommt” (“A grim time is coming”), BlogSpot, December 3, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418134545/https://ulrich-hartmann.blogspot.com/2014/12/eine-gruselige-zeit-kommt.html.
[271] The Twitter account only posted six times, and is archived at https://archive.vn/wip/M8NKQ. The web domain expired in February 2016; it had been registered to Gandi SAS, a French provider.
[272] The persona was associated with the “Politgraben” blog at https://web.archive.org/web/20200421233045/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/author/politgraben/.
[273] The pin of Verkerk can be seen at https://www.pinterest.at/pin/306596687107500671/. The Bromberg profile has been deleted, but is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20160927015215/http://www.myheimat.de/hamburg/profile/max-bromberg-78517.html.
[274] Persona “Josefever,” Before It’s News, https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/contributor/stories/?uid=421606.
[275] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Lunatic Joe’s Blog,” WordPress, https://web.archive.org/web/20200421233129/https://joeshever.wordpress.com/. The same persona was on Twitter as LunaticJoeH: https://web.archive.org/web/20200404100741/https://twitter.com/lunaticjoeh.
[276] Persona “Dusty L.A.”, “Turkey was about to open second front vs. Armenia”, Medium, April 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154202/https://medium.com/@DustyLA/butkevi%C4%8Diuss-european-commissary-vs-grybauskaite-s-presidency-a5fb9e227e8d.
[277] Persona “Dusty L.A.”, “Turkey was about to open second front vs. Armenia”, indymedia.org.uk, April 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145646/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2016/04/524715.html.
[278] Anonymous post, “Turkey was about to open second front vs. Armenia”, homment.com,, April 6, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145704/https://homment.com/dCUHKFspYF.
[279] Google search on site:ekurd.net “Turkey was about to open,” Google, April 8, 2020, https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aekurd.net+%22turkey+was+about+to+open%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB862FR862&oq=site%3Aekurd.net+%22turkey+was+about+to+open%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.10194j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
[280] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Turkey was about to open second front vs. Armenia,” beforeitsnews.com, April 8, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145758/https://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-conflict/2016/04/turkey-planned-to-open-second-front-in-nagorno-karabakh-2460965.html. The same persona posted the story on Facebook three days later: https://www.facebook.com/NewWorldOrderThe/posts/1576472702663296.
[281] Persona “Politgraben,” “BERG-KARABACH: PLAN DER TÜRKEI GESCHEITERT” (“Nagorno-Karabakh: Turkey’s plan failed”), wordpress.com, April 8, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418145740/https://politgraben.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/berg-karabach-plan-der-tuerkei-gescheitert/.
[282] Persona “Ino-News,” “Курдский источник: Турция готовила для Армении второй фронт” (“Kurdish source: Turkey was preparing a second front for Armenia”), infonews.info, April 8, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20200315182628/https://inonews.info/2016/04/08/kurdskij-istochnik-turtsiya-gotovila-dlya-armenii-vtoroj-front/.
[283] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Turkey was about to open second front vs. Armenia,” scoop.it, April 11, 2016, https://www.scoop.it/topic/the-world-war-iii-just-signs-or-final-diagnosis/p/4062423407/2016/04/11/turkey-was-about-to-open-second-front-vs-armenia.
[284] Persona “Cyber_Legion,” “#European Integration without the #EU. Nordic dream of Swedish nationalists,” Twitter, October 20, 2015, https://twitter.com/Cyber_Legion/status/656414091221823488.
[285] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “European Integration without the EU. Nordic dream of Swedish nationalists,” wordpress.com, October 22, 2015, https://joeshever.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/european-integration-without-the-eu-nordic-dream-of-swedish-nationalists/; beforeitsnews.com, October 22, 2015, https://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2015/10/european-integration-without-the-eu-nordic-dream-of-swedish-nationalists-2592024.html.
[286] Anonymous, “European Integration without the EU. Nordic dream of Swedish nationalists,” indymedia.org.uk, October 23, 2015, https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/10/522787.html.
[287] Persona “Ino-News,”Евроинтеграция вне ЕС. Северная мечта шведских националистов” (“Euro-integration outside the EU: The Northern dream of Swedish nationalists”), aftershock.news, October 26, 2015 https://aftershock.news/?q=node/344284.
[288] Black Defence Foundation, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419213033/https://blackdefence.wixsite.com/blackdefense/blog.
[289] Persona “Piter Preston,” “Police lawlessness. Violence against African Americans,” YouTube, April 3, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419214940/https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T-dwnx1G9Vc; embedded in Black Defense Foundation, April 6, 2015,
[291] Unattributed author, “Bob Goodlatte: Pacifying Blacks,” Black Defense Foundation, March 3, 2015, https://blackdefence.wixsite.com/blackdefense/single-post/2015/03/03/Bob-Goodlatte-Pacifying-Blacks.
[292] Persona “Josef Hashever,” “Just like this opinion and want to share it,” posted to Facebook page “Beyond Awake,” June 30, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419220037/https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1464549067188994&set=o.362881567123288&type=3.
[293] Unattributed author, “Barack Obama - ‘White Raven’ or ‘Lame Duck’?”, Black Defense Foundation, February 3, 2015, https://blackdefence.wixsite.com/blackdefense/single-post/2015/02/02/Barack-Obama-%E2%80%93-White-Raven-or-Lame-Duck.
[294] Persona “Ulrich Hartmann,” “Barack Obama - weißer Rabe oder lahme Ente?” (“Barack Obama - White Raven or Lame Duck?”), blogspot.com, February 9, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419221359/https://ulrich-hartmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/barack-obama-weier-rabe-oder-lahme-ente.html.
[295] Persona “Steven Laack,” “35% of seats for Afro-Americans in proposed ‘public Missouri Police Oversight Co,” indymedia.co.uk, March 20, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419223755/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2015/03/519864.html.
[296] Persona “Ino-News,” “Афро-американцы хотят получить полный контроль над полицией США” (“Afro-Americans want to get full control over U.S. police”), aftershock.news, March 28, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419223509/https://aftershock.news/?q=node/298024&full.
[297] Persona “Steven Laack,” “Lawlessness, hatred and violence. But is it the way to go, Merica?,” blogspot.com, May 5, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419225402/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2015/05/lawlessness-hatred-and-violence-but-is.html.
[298] Persona “Kent Brockman,” “Black violence,” YouTube, April 3, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20200419230151/https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=z63WHcfV814&app=desktop.
[299] Particular thanks are due to Reddit for publishing its findings of Secondary Infektion assets in December 2019. See u/worstnerd, “Suspected campaign from Russia on Reddit,” Reddit, December 6, 2019, https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/e74nml/suspected_campaign_from_russia_on_reddit/.
[300] Persona “RuffMoulton”, “The USA will reinforce security of diplomatic mission in South Korea with special forces”, 13 November 2017, 13 November 2017, http://archive.is/JYKlV
[301] MilitaryObserver, “Flowers for Kim Jong-un or Operation White Chrysanthemum”, 10 November 2017 http://archive.is/sGemr
[302] Persona “Realist233”, Comment on “Flowers for Kim Jong-un or Operation White Chrysanthemum”, 15 November 2017, http://archive.is/nPsSg#selection-467.0-467.178
[303] Persona “MaxKasyan”, "Зимові Олімпійські ігри 2018 у Південній Кореї і їх безпека" (2018 South Korean Winter Olympics and their Security)” 29 November 2017, http://archive.is/NnGZg#selection-403.0-403.59
[304] Persona “КАСIАН МАКСИМ”, "Зимові Олімпійські ігри 2018 у Південній Кореї і їх безпека" (2018 South Korean Winter Olympics and their Security)” 29 November 2017, http://archive.is/9S2mx#selection-1155.0-1155.59
[305] Unattributed article, “The PyeongChang 2018 and its security,” homment.com, November 14, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200422014028/https://homment.com/the-PyeongChang-2018-and-its-security.
[306] Homment, “Olympische Winterspiele als Deckmantel für den Angriff auf Nordkorea” (“The Winter Olympics as cover for the attack on North Korea”), 21 December 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200410163530/https://homment.com/Olympische-Winterspiele-als-Deckmantel-fuer-den-Angriff-auf-Nordkorea
[307] Persona “Philhoch”, “German sports officials are concerned for the safety of German athletes at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games”, December 22, 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20200410164423/https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5108016
[308] Persona “Blancoaless”, “Los funcionarios deportivos de Alemania preocupados por seguridad de atletas en los JJ.OO. de PyeongChang”, December 24, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200325180141/https://www.reddit.com/r/es/comments/7m0937/los_funcionarios_deportivos_de_alemania/
[309] Persona “Levchenko Oleg”, "XXIII Зимові Олімпійські ігри: В очікуванні трагедії" (“The 23rd Winter Olympics: In Anticipation of a Tragedy”) 26 December 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20200325182333/https://www.obozrevatel.com/ukr/my/politics/xxiii-zimovi-olimpijski-igri-v-ochikuvanni-tragedii.htm
[310] Homment, “Sports fans petitioned the IOC to cancel Winter Olympics”, 29 December 2017, http://archive.is/Gwu2V#selection-871.0-871.56
[311] Persona “Almanzamary”, “La petición de los aficionados al deporte pide al COI que cancele los JJ.OO. de Invierno-2018” 9 January 2018, http://archive.is/Uowl0#selection-359.0-359.93
[312] Persona “Проц Василий”, “Любителі спорту через петицію закликали МОК скасувати Зимову Олімпіаду“, 1 January 2018 http://archive.is/iWJbR#selection-33.0-50.0
[313] Persona “Axel Solberg,” “StratCom: Russian hackers are involved in illegal activities aimed at influencing the pace of elections in Sweden,” Medium, July 24, 2017, https://medium.com/@AxelSolberg/stratcom-russian-hackers-are-involved-in-illegal-activities-aimed-at-influencing-the-pace-of-467503ae6d8a; topbuzz.com, July 24, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418163045/https://www.topbuzz.com/@solberg/stratcom-russian-hackers-are-involved-in-illegal-activities-aimed-at-influencing-the-pace-of-elections-in-sweden-CkJAEyCvdVk; homment.com, July 24, 2017, https://homment.com/StratCom-Russian-hackers-are-involved-in-illegal-activities-aimed-at-influencing-the-pace.
[314] Persona “Василь Плисюк” (“Vasil Plisyuk”), “"Російські хакери": кремлівська зброя гібридної війни проти демократії” (“Russian hackers: the Kremlin’s weapons of hybrid war against democracy”), politiko.ua, August 8, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418163549/https://politiko.ua/blogpost146273; livejournal.com, August 8, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418163453/https://ua-1.livejournal.com/566725.html.
[315] For transparency, one of the authors of this paper has been friends with one of the people whose name was one the forged letter for some 20 years.
[316] Persona “Caspian Elstrom,” “Marine Le Pen and Russian hackers improve The Sweden Democrats approval rating,” Medium, August 21, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418173054/https://medium.com/@elstrom/marine-le-pen-and-russian-hackers-improve-the-sweden-democrats-approval-rating-13ac9e8b6b46; Reddit, August 21, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418173444/https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/991hjm/marine_le_pen_and_russian_hackers_improve_the/; indybay.org, August 21, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418173416/https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/08/21/18817015.php.
[317] Persona “Максим Крафт” (“Maksim Kraft”), “Марін Ле Пен і російські хакери роблять рейтинг "Шведським демократам"” (“Marine Le Pen and Russian hackers improve the Sweden Democrats’ rating”), politiko.ua, August 23, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418173947/http://press.politiko.ua/blogpost151124; livejournal.com, August 23, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418173740/https://ua-politics.livejournal.com/1307003.html.
[318] Persona “Nadine Kinstry,” “Ukraine ‘drowns’ the Sweden Democrats”, Medium, August 30, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418174645/https://medium.com/@kinstry/ukraine-drowns-the-sweden-democrats-910417925d5d.
[319] Persona “Gustavo Salcedo Meija,” “Ucrania ‘ahoga’ a Demócratas de Suecia” (“Ukrinae ‘drowns’ the Sweden Democrats”), globedia.com, September 1, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175119/http://globedia.com/ucrania-ahoga-democratas-suecia.
[320] Persona “Laurent Lavial,” “L’Ukraine donne la jambette aux Democrates de Suede” (“Ukraine kicks the Sweden Democrats”), developpez.net, September 3, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175300/https://www.developpez.net/forums/d1889769/club-professionnels-informatique/actualites/politique/l-ukraine-donne-jambette-aux-democrates-suede/.
[321] “Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, January 6, 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.
[322] Persona “OliverrStonne,” “MI6 operative on anti-Trump campaign,” BuzzFeed Community, January 20, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20191214150229/https://www.buzzfeed.com/oliverrstonne/mi6-operative-on-anti-trump-campaign-2sdhe.
[323] Persona “Pierre Buisson,” “Buzzfeed impute la paternité du faux rapport compromettant sur Trump au MI6” (“BuzzFeed attributes the birth of the fake compromising report on Trump to MI6”), actu-politique.info, January 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155920/https://actu-politique.info/viewtopic.php?t=18786.
[324] Persona “Peter Kaufman,” “Buzzfeed schreibt MI-6 die Autorschaft des fake kompromittierenden Materials über Trump zu” (“BuzzFeed attributes the authorship of the fake compromising material on Trump to MI6), meine-news.de, January 26, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418155941/https://www.meine-news.de/boellstein/c-politik/buzzfeed-schreibt-mi-6-die-autorschaft-des-fake-kompromittierenden-materials-ueber-trump-zu_a18716.
[325] Persona “Martin Karlsson,” “Brittiska Mi-6 spion avslöjar hemligheter om anti-trump-kampanj” (“British MI-6 spy reveals secrets of anti-Trump campaign”), text accompanying German version of the article, Facebook, January 30, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/Starkfuerdeutschland/posts/115338628980910.
[326] Persona “Kyle Warren,” “Trump-May meeting: Downing Street's desperate attempt to save face,” Quora, February 2, 2017, https://www.quora.com/Does-May-understand-that-she-is-creating-a-big-mess-for-the-UK;
[327] For example, persona “Thomas Cooke,” “Evolution of relations between Donald Trump and Her Majesty’s secret service,” Medium, March 22, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20191210223517/https://medium.com/@ThomasCookee/evolution-of-relations-between-donald-trump-and-her-majestys-secret-service-a20586e80153
[328] Persona “Klaus Hoffman,” “Die Evolution der Beziehungen zwischen Donald Trump und den Geheimdiensten Ihrer Majestät” (“The evolution of relations between Donald Trump and Her Majesty’s secret service,” kraichgau.news, March 24, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160928/https://kraichgau.news/region/c-politik-wirtschaft/die-evolution-der-beziehungen-zwischen-donald-trump-und-den-geheimdiensten-ihrer-majestaet_a8053.
[329] Persona “Mats Petersson,” “Evolution av relationerna mellan Donald Trump och säkerhetstjänsten av Hennes Majestät,” pressbladet.se, March 30, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418161027/http://www.pressbladet.se/articles/view/evolution-av-relationerna-mellan-donald-trump-och-sakerhetstjansten-a.
[330] Persona “ИЩЕНКО АЛЕКСЕЙ,” “Эволюция отношений Дональда Трампа и спецслужб Её Величества,” korrespondent.net, March 27, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160947/https://blogs.korrespondent.net/blog/politics/3832189/.
[331] Donald J. Trump, “Working on major Trade Deal with the United Kingdom. Could be very big & exciting. JOBS! The E.U. is very protectionist with the U.S. STOP,” Twitter, July 25, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889821674987761664.
[332] Persona “JDallas,” “Trump pardons London for collecting damaging information on him?” defendingthetruth.com, July 31, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418163431/https://defendingthetruth.com/threads/trump-pardons-london-for-collecting-damaging-information-on-him.61856/.
[333] Persona “ГОРИЧНЫЙ ИГОРЬ” (Gorychniy Igor”), “Производственная травма кремлевского Лжедмитрия” (“Kremlin False Dmitriy’s Work Injury”), korrespondent.net, August 30, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418174843/https://blogs.korrespondent.net/blog/politics/4005789/.
[334] Persona “IgoGorr,” “Производственная травма кремлевского Лжедмитрия” (“Kremlin False Dmitriy’s Work Injury”), blog.i.ua, August 30, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175014/http://blog.i.ua/user/10398775/2241375/.
[335] Persona “James Alkirby,” “Ukrainian view of the future of Russia,” Medium, August 31, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175046/https://medium.com/@alkirby/ukrainian-view-of-the-future-of-russia-dca036fe2177; thestudentroom.co.uk, August 31, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175017/https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5556060; cssforum.com.pk, August 31, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175127/http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-compulsory-subjects/current-affairs/120998-ukrainian-view-future-russia.html.
[336] Persona “Taciano Aguilera,” “Accidente laboral del "falso" primer ministro de Rusia” (“The ‘false’ prime minister of Russia’s work accident”), globedia.com, September 1, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175316/http://ec.globedia.com/accidente-laboral-falso-ministro-rusia; burbuja.info, September 1, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175210/https://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/threads/accidente-laboral-del-falso-primer-ministro-de-rusia.1073516/; foroexplayate.com, September 1, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175241/http://www.foroexplayate.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=41916.
[337] Persona “Петро Рябко” (“Petro Ryabko”), “Майбутнє України” (“The Future of Ukraine”), YouTube, September 3, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175334/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywwI9zgMrpU.
[338] For example persona “Григорий Шляпин” (“Grigorii Shlyapin”), “На Украине началась кампания по избранию Медведева президентом России” (“Campaign to elect Medvedev president of Russia began in Ukraine”), cont.ws, September 4, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418175505/https://cont.ws/@Grishal/1053673.
[339] Persona “Websam”, “The Guardian 'deprived' Medvedev of funds for the 2024 presidential campaign,” politicaldiscussion.net, September 11, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418180046/https://politicaldiscussion.net/threads/the-guardian-deprived-medvedev-of-funds-for-the-2024-presidential-campaign.388/.
[340] Persona “Floramatista,” “The Guardian ‘ha privado’ a Medvedev de fondos para la campaña presidencial de 2024” (“the Guardian ‘deprived’ Medvedev of funds for the 2024 presidential campaign”), Reddit, September 12, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418180237/https://www.reddit.com/r/redditores/comments/9f5uy1/the_guardian_ha_privado_a_medvedev_de_fondos_para/.
[341] Persona “Pat Schumann,” “ The Guardian: Dmitri Medwedew hat kein Geld für den Wahlkampf 2024” (“The Guardian: Dmitri Medvedev has no money for the 2024 election”), ask1.org, September 12, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418180202/https://www.ask1.org/threads/the-guardian-dmitri-medwedew-hat-kein-geld-f%C3%BCr-den-wahlkampf-2024.18076/.
[342] Persona “Mikhail Ivashov,” “The Guardian ‘лишил’ Медведева средств на предвыборную кампанию 2024 года” (“The Guardian ‘deprived’ Medvedev of funds for the 2024 election campaign”), pandoraopen.ru, September 13, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418180535/https://x-true.info/73922-the-guardian-lishil-medvedeva-sredstv-na-predvybornuju-kampaniju-2024-goda.html.
[343] Search for “saved at the expense of Russian retirees,” April 10, 2020, https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB862FR862&ei=M12QXrrdIfKS0PEPo7iAsAU&q=site%3Atheguardian.com+%22saved+at+the+expense+of+Russian+retirees%22&oq=site%3Atheguardian.com+%22saved+at+the+expense+of+Russian+retirees%22&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoECAAQR0oKCBcSBjEyLTE3NEoJCBgSBTEyLTEyUNj7CViEqApgnrYKaABwAngAgAHkAYgB70CSAQYwLjkuMzGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwj6wo-R5d3oAhVyCTQIHSMcAFYQ4dUDCAw&uact=5.
[344] Search for “Besides that, Medvedev needs to solve a number of serious health problems,” April 10, 2020, https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atheguardian.com+%22Besides+that%2C+Medvedev+needs+to+solve+a+number+of+serious+health+problems%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB862FR862&oq=site%3Atheguardian.com+%22Besides+that%2C+Medvedev+needs+to+solve+a+number+of+serious+health+problems%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.30738j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
[345] Persona “Dolan Moss,” “NATO: Biological terrorism traditions from Vietnam to Ukraine,” articlesreader.com, September 27, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20161229212109/http://www.articlesreader.com/nato-biological-terrorism-traditions-from-vietnam-to-ukraine/.
[346] Persona “Bloger_Nasralny,” “НАТО: традиции биотерроризма от Вьетнама до Украины,” aftershock.news, September 28, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418154102/https://aftershock.news/?q=node%2F439886&full=.
[347] Persona “Abkusainov,” “Казахстану грозит эпидемия” (“Epidemic threatens Kazakhstan”), yvision.kz, May 24, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200420132634/https://yvision.kz/post/833065.
[348] The letter can be viewed in archive form at https://web.archive.org/web/20200420133646/https://images2.imgbox.com/f0/93/BwgX2oEk_o.jpg.
[349] Adam Rawnsley, “Russian Trolls Hype Coronavirus and Giuliani Conspiracies,” The Daily Beast, April 9, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies.
[350] Persona “boltandy”, “В Алматы признались в работе над коронавирусом до эпидемии” (“Almaty admitted to working on coronavirus before the epidemic”), mynizhyn.com, February 22, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20200420162112/http://www.mynizhyn.com/blogs/boltandy_495.html .
[351] Embedded in article by persona “Steven Laack,” “Mayday! Theresa May: a mortician or a savior?”, newsparticipation.com, August 2, 2016, https://newsparticipation.com/mayday-theresa-may-a-mortician-or-a-savior/.
[352] Persona “Military Observer,” “Flowers for Kim Jong-un or Operation White Chrysanthemum,” Quora, November 10, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418191500/https://www.quora.com/Can-South-Korea%E2%80%99s-intelligence-service-assassinate-the-North-Korean-leadership-Do-they-have-any-active-plans-If-they-can-launch-a-strike-missile-why-dont-they-do-that.
[353] Persona “mokley,” “American secret services: “Pravy sector” is training IG fighters,” indymedia.co.uk, October 21, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418142825/https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2015/10/522777.html.
[354] Persona “Emil Joranssen,” “Karl Bildt: mellan fängelse och ukrainas statsministerpost.” (“Karl Bildt: Between prison and the Ukrainian premiership,” pressbladet.se, March 11, 2016, http://www.pressbladet.se/articles/view/karl-bildt-mellan-fangelse-och-ukrainas-statsministerpost1.
[355] For example, persona “Josef Hashever,” “Carl Bildt: hovering between prison and the Ukrainian Premiership,” blogspot, 13 March 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418143949/http://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/03/carl-bildt-hovering-between-prison-and.html.
[356] Persona “Gerard,” “Garder le visage de l’Europe,” politicien.fr, March 14, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418160750/http://gerard.politicien.fr/2017/03/14/garder-le-visage-de-leurope/. The headline appears to be an attempt at a literal translation of the English “Saving Europe’s face.”
[357] Site search for “Hugo Brandy” on April 10, 2020, https://www.iss.europa.eu/search-view?search_text=Hugo%20Brandy.
[358] Persona “Johan,” “Flight SK1755: vem behöver en falsk sensation” (“Flight SK1755: who needs a fake sensation”), nyhetsverket.se, February 11, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20160407165422/http://www.nyhetsverket.se/nyhet/25851/Flight-SK1755-vem-beh%C3%B6ver-en-falsk-sensation; the equivalent English post was attributed to persona “Steven Laack,” “Flight SK1755: Who needs false sensation?”, blogspot.com, February 13, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20200418135054/https://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2015/02/flight-sk-1755-who-needs-false-sensation.html.
[359] RIA Novosti, “Жив ли "Живой журнал": кого и зачем читать” (“Is LiveJournal still alive? Who to read and why”), March 23, 2020, https://ria.ru/20200323/1568892366.html
[360] Rusprofile, “Кривич Артем Геннадьевич” (“Krivich, Artyom Gennadyevich”), rusprofile.ru, https://www.rusprofile.ru/person/krivich-ag-470322686728
[361] Kont, “Конт объединяет талантливых авторов и интересных аналитиков со всего мира” (“Kont brings together talented authors and interesting analysts from around the world”), cont.ws, https://cont.ws/about
[362] Russky Expert, “Континенталист” (“Kontinentalist”), ruxpert.ru, January 20, 2020, https://ruxpert.ru/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82
[363] Brand Analytics, “Топ-платформ и Топ-100 виральных русскоязычных медиаресурсов, МАЙ 2019 года” (“Top platform and top 100 viral Russian-language media resources, May 2019”), br-analytics.ru, June 6, 2019, https://br-analytics.ru/blog/top-100-maj-2019
[364] Чекко (“Chekko”), ООО "МАКС-ПАРК" (“MAXPARK PRIVATE LIMITED COMPANY”), checko.ru, https://checko.ru/company/maks-park-1145009002038
[365] Maxpark, “О сервисе” (“About the service”), maxpark.com, https://maxpark.com/main/about
[366] Russian Expert, “Aftershock”, ruxpert.ru, March 10, 2020, https://ruxpert.ru/Aftershock
[367] Brand Analytics, “Топ-платформ и Топ-100 виральных русскоязычных медиаресурсов, МАЙ 2019 года” (“Top platform and top 100 viral Russian-language media resources, May 2019”), br-analytics.ru, June 6, 2019, https://br-analytics.ru/blog/top-100-maj-2019
[368] INFOX.ru, “C-Мedia купил Newsland.ru” (“C-Media buys Newsland.ru”), infox.ru, January 14, 2010, https://www.infox.ru/news/120/37918-c-media-kupil-newslandru
[369] Ru.Wikipedia, “Newsland”, ru.wikipedia.org, March 4, 2020, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsland
[370] Politikus, “О сайте” (“About the site”), politikus.ru, https://politikus.ru/about.html
[371] Buzina, “О писателе” (“About the author”), buzina.org, https://buzina.org/about-avtor.html
[372] Fishki, “О проекте” (“About the project”), fishki.net, https://fishki.net/about
[373] Razumei, “О ПРОЕКТЕ” (“About the project), https://www.razumei.ru/pr/
[374] Openrussia, “openrussia.org — от открытой информации к открытой стране.” https://openrussia.org/about/
[375] Meduza, Коллекционеры дорогих картинок Кто делает «Фишки.net», Pikabu и «Я плакалъ»: исследование «Медузы», 13 April 2019, https://meduza.io/feature/2016/04/13/kollektsionery-dorogih-kartinok
[376] Infopolk, “Частые Вопросы” (Frequently Asked Questions), http://infopolk.ru/%d1%87%d0%b0%d1%81%d1%82%d1%8b%d0%b5%d0%b2%d0%be%d0%bf%d1%80%d0%be%d1%81%d1%8b/