New Report: Russia Attempted To Hack Pentagon Social Media Accounts

Those egg people.

One of the side stories to emerge from the whole Russia probe, as far as the tactics they used to try and interfere with the 2016 election is the use of “bots” on social media.

The bots would flood certain posts or seemed to be triggered by particular words. The belief is that they upped Trump’s profile on social media, while flooding social media with false stories about Hillary Clinton.

Not sure why. The real stories about her are bad enough.

Anyway, it may not have stopped there.

A report out today suggests that Russia has tried to gain access to the Defense Department’s social media accounts, through the use of malware-laden messages.

 Russia is said to have sent messages to over 10,000 Pentagon Twitter users, tailored to their interests, baiting them to click on links to stories. Clicking on the link would enable Russian hackers to gain control of the target’s mobile device or computer and, as a result, his or her Twitter account.

According to Time, Russia’s attempts were disclosed in a March report to U.S. counterintelligence officials investigating Russian interference efforts in the 2016 presidential election.

These particular attacks came after the election, but the purpose seems to be the same.

Experts have said the goal is to gain access and then use those accounts to spread false information.

Experts and officials widely describe Russian disinformation efforts as nothing new, but Moscow has become more brazen in its influence efforts against Western democracies and elections.

Most recently, the French election saw similar interference as that of the 2016 election in the U.S.

Candidate Emmanuel Macron saw his emails hacked and released, by what some researchers are saying is the same group responsible for the release of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016.

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