Thread by @openfacto

We have identified a network of more than 1300 websites run by the GRU, targeting Russian speakers including domestic audiences. A thread 🧵...

And read our full report here openfacto.fr/2022/01/27/the…

#Russia #Disinfo #OSINT

InfoRos (inforos.com) is a Russian news agency founded in 2003 which has been accused by several countries of being for run by the GRU Unit 54777 specialized in psyops. InfoRos officially declares 276 websites on the Internet Authority page (Roskomnadzor).

We identified a distinctive snippet of its source code and performed a reverse nameserver lookup via the InfoRos server that hosted the first discovered sites. We found a total of 1,341 InfoRos linked-websites. Most redirected to a Russian city news portal controlled by InfoRos.

We mapped all active sites, gathered creation dates, and analysed narratives found in InfoRos content. InfoRos’ targets span the entire Russian territory. One visible trend is the concentration of websites along the Western border.

We assessed the number of websites in relation to the population or websites per capita. InfoRos intensified its efforts on the western and southern sides of Russia.
It raised two questions

1/Has the Western region been targeted because the Russian political power considers it more exposed to the influences and media of the European Union and NATO countries?

2/Is the Caucasus the object of special attention for its instability, or for its proximity to neighbouring Georgia, now an ally of the West?

We looked at site creation dates or acquisition dates. We found out that InfoRos has registered nearly 75% of the news portals since Jan 2019 region by region following the Cyrillic alphabetical order, suggesting that InfoRos operators follow a predefined list.

Our findings led us to believe the relationship with Ukraine has changed InfoRos’ strategy. It is plausible InfoRos’ resources were redirected at the end of 2013 towards the collective effort to criticise the Euromaidan movement, and then to legitimise the annexation of Crimea

Looking at the content, Russian InfoRos portals act as a bulwark against Western info. This occupation of the local cyberspace could demonstrate a certain paranoia regarding an« informational confrontation with the West ».

The network functions as a national megaphone for InfoRos with multiple echo chambers. But also as a reactive tool that allows the GRU to rapidly disseminate content in crisis.

Many more avenues remain up for research within the disinfo and osint communities.

We would like to thank warmly @NovelSci for her invaluable review and editorial assistance.