Wow big story I just saw from @donie on a @cnnbrk undercover investigation by @clarissaward & her team revealing a Russian linked troll farm in Ghana Africa. One of the accnts they highlight is @africamustwake. We reported on that & a couple others last wk
Here's our thread from last wk on 4 tightly connected #BLM accnts that we identified a while back & had added to our new alt-left #Hamilton68 set of Kremlin-aligned twitter trolls. Can't believe they turned out 2b Russian outsourced accounts based in Ghana
This is a set of some of the accounts we also found. I guess we will find out soon enough from Twitter as I am assuming they will make this suspended data set available. @AfricaMustWake
@AfricaThen
@TheNewAfrica_
@_Pawa_2_da_ppl_
@s_Racism_
@TonCarthur
@WomensRights___
@AfricaThen
@TheNewAfrica_
@_Pawa_2_da_ppl_
@s_Racism_
@TonCarthur
@WomensRights___
Looks like Twitter has posted information and provided an archive dump of the data. It will be very interesting to see how many we previously found of the 71 or so.
Nice work by the way @DarrenLinvill .... I have a lot of reading and data to go through tonight ... thanks to you guys. Who needs sleep.
The threat intel & network visualization shop @Graphika_NYC was also completely on this Ghana Troll farm and is out with the following report. So much to go through tonight. "IRA in Ghana: Double Deceit" #disinfo #osint #infosec d1qmdf3vop2l07.cloudfront.net/uplifting-lion…
Two other accounts from this new set of 71 localized to a Russian backed troll farm in Ghana, @end_differeces & @black_mind_incc. Interestingly the @black_mind_incc accnt shows up in our archive & analysis of #RacistDebraMessing hashtag in Sep 2019 used to attack @DebraMessing
So the EBLA NGO that was setup as the cover for this operation is interesting. As was mentioned in both the @cnnbrk and @Graphika_NYC reporting the elbango(.)org website is barely functional, is a #Wordpress site & still in development. Heres the Twitter account profile and site
Currently the Russian backed eblango(.)org site has been hacked to display what appears to be Japanese SEO spam. I would use caution when going to the site. It is not unreasonable to think there may now be malware inserted into this #Wordpress site. #infosec #OSINT
The eblango(.)org site in terms of #OSINT is surprisingly clean. WHOIS is private registration and IP address is a shared IP address at Namecheap(.)com #disinfo #trollfarm
Its important to note the Russian IRA troll site outsourced to Accra Ghana is but one small 24 employee troll farm. There are dozens around the world. At least 12 in Russia & there are most definitely more in Africa along with Venezuela, Macedonia, Albania & Georgia
Back in Nov 2019 when we first identified some of these Ghana trolls (obviously didn't know that at the time) ...we categorized these accounts into our Kremlin-aligned alt-left set of #Hamilton68 accounts. We also analyzed some characteristics like top hashtags and tweet schedule
From the @clarissaward report this Ghana troll farm made adjustments in their activity to better mimic American timezones. Its important to note other foreign trolls have started doing this & tweet schedule isnt enough of an indicator now. Here is @AfricaMustWake & @TheNewAfrica_
There are of course other indicators that can be spotted that we won't reveal & its clear the troll farms have learned from 2016 & are making adjustments to become more difficult to spot. @clarissaward & her team at @CNN did a fantastic job but most troll farms will not be found
