Russian Troll Factory Agrees to Compensate Former Employee

Lisitsyn · Jun 26, 2015

Lyudmila Savchuk, a freelance reporter and a civic activist, at the end of May sued her last employer, the Internet Research Agency, Russias most famous Internet troll farm in St. Petersburg, where she had been working for about two months. She accused the Agency of illegal hiring and demanded compensation over a labor dispute. On June 23 they finally met in court and in result the Internet Research Agency had agreed to compensate Savchuk for violation of employment laws. But the real purpose of starting the court proceedings was to show the truth about the pro-Kremlin troll factory, to show Putins propaganda in its real colors.

We thought the troll factory representatives would shy away again and wouldn't show up. But they did show up and have suddenly agreed to the demands of my suit. As my lawyer says, they picked the lesser evil.
So we really did pull them out into the limelight. The fact that they showed up, that the name Internet Research LLC has been spoken, means the troll factory really exists.
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Read more at: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/06/23/russia-troll-factory-employee-whistleblower/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/russian-troll-factory-sued-underpayment-labour-violations-vladimir-putin?CMP=share_btn_tw

waltky · Sep 29, 2016

Russian trolls are attempting to spread political influence...

Russia steps up trolling attacks on the West, U.S. intel report finds
September 28, 2016 - A new U.S. intelligence report says that the Russian government is conducting a wide-ranging and “opportunistic” campaign to expand its political influence in Europe by deploying Internet “trolls and other cyber actors” to challenge pro-Western journalists and spread pro-Kremlin messages in social media forums.

Yahoo News obtained a declassified summary of the report, which also describes the role of two state-owned media outlets, RT and Sputnik, in what some experts say is an increasingly aggressive “information warfare” campaign. According to the report, the outlets promote Russia’s political aims with programming targeted to “activist” audiences including “far-right and far-left elements of European society.” It adds that the RT channel gives “disproportionate coverage and airtime to the European Parliament’s more extreme factions.”

The report, by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was originally requested by congressional intelligence committees late last year. The panels also asked for a separate report on Russia’s use of political assassination. Classified versions of both documents were delivered by Clapper’s office to Capitol Hill in July.

The decision to declassify brief excerpts from the first report coincides with recent disclosures about suspected Russian cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political groups. Many in the U.S. intelligence community believe that indicates Russia has expanded its cyberwar and disinformation efforts to the United States. “This is the 21st-century version of ‘active measures,’” said Heather Conley, director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a reference to the Cold War term for the Soviet Union’s efforts to manipulate Western opinion by spreading false information, such as the claim that U.S. scientists had manufactured the AIDS virus as part of a biological weapons project at Fort Detrick, Md.

Conley added that the use of “information warfare” techniques to pursue political goals has now been incorporated into official Russian military doctrine. The goal, she said, is not “the annihilation” of the country’s enemies, but to “weaken them from within” by “keeping everybody off balance” and “sowing doubt” about their political leaders and institutions. A report by Conley describing this effort is due to be released by CSIS next month.

Russia’s use of trolls on social media would appear to fit that pattern. A report in the Guardian last year identified a St. Petersburg office building where “hundreds of paid bloggers work around the clock” to flood Internet sites and Western social media forums with posts praising Russian president Vladimir Putin and denouncing the “depravity and injustice” of the West.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-s...l-report-finds-203421008.html?ref=gs][/quote]

See also:

Cyber firm challenges Yahoo claim hack was state-sponsored
September 28, 2016 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cyber security company on Wednesday asserted that the hack of 500 million account credentials from Yahoo was the work of an Eastern European criminal gang, adding another layer of intrigue to a murky investigation into the unprecedented data heist.

Arizona-based InfoArmor issued a report whose conclusion challenged Yahoo’s position that a nation-state actor orchestrated the heist, disclosed last week by the internet company. InfoArmor, which provides companies with protection against employee identify theft, said the hacked trove of user data was later sold to at least three clients, including one state-sponsored group. Reuters was unable to verify the report's findings. Yahoo declined comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the hack, did not return a call seeking comment.

A U.S. government source familiar with the Yahoo investigation said there was no hard evidence yet on whether the hack was state-sponsored. Attribution for cyber attacks is widely considered difficult in both the intelligence and research communities. The task is made especially challenging by the fact that criminal hackers sometimes provide information to government intelligence agencies or offer their services for hire, making it hard to know who the ultimate mastermind of a hack might be.

A man walks past a Yahoo logo during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain

Yahoo said last week that it only recently discovered the intrusion, which it blamed on a state-sponsored actor without providing technical evidence. Nation-state hackers are widely viewed as possessing more advanced capabilities than criminal groups, a perception that could benefit Yahoo as it works to minimize fallout from the breach and complete its sale to Verizon Communications Inc. InfoArmor concluded the Yahoo hackers were criminal after reviewing a small sample of compromised accounts, Andrew Komarov, the firm's chief intelligence officer, said in an interview.

The hackers, dubbed Group E, have a track record of selling stolen personal data on the dark web, and have been previously linked to breaches at LinkedIn, Tumblr and MySpace, Komarov said. “They have never been hired by anyone to hack Yahoo," Komarov, who is from Russia, said. "They were simply looking for well known sites that had many users."

In an illustration of the confusion about who carried out the hack and why, an NBC News report Wednesday interpreted Komarov's findings as pointing to the Russian government as the ultimate perpetrator. A Wall Street Journal report, which said that InfoArmor was able to crack encrypted passwords for some Yahoo accounts provided by the newspaper, came to the opposite conclusion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cyber-fi...state-sponsored-213902785--sector.html?ref=gs
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Russian Troll Factory Agrees to Compensate Former Employee