"The Russian troll farm that in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election posted a bizarro video claiming Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was a rhino poacher, is back with hundreds of new fake news websites serving up phony political commentary with an AI assist. In a paper published today, Recorded Future's Insikt Group threat researchers also unveil evidence that the pro-Putin posters known as CopyCop, aka Storm-1516,"
"Dougan is a former deputy sheriff from Florida who gained political asylum in Moscow in 2016, and is allegedly a disinformation purveyor supported by the Kremlin. His phony media outlets have been cited in news articles or social media posts thousands of times, and both the US Treasury and Washington Post allege connections between Dougan, the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), and the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU)."
"In fact, the GRU reportedly funds the LLM servers that "almost certainly" rewrite articles from legitimate news sites to post on its fake media outlets, and also create deepfakes and other false content targeting political leaders in the US, Ukraine, France, and other countries, Insikt Group said. Since January, the researchers have uncovered at least 200 new websites that they attribute to CopyCop."
A Russian-linked troll farm, CopyCop (aka Storm-1516), operates hundreds of fake news websites impersonating local media, political parties, movements, and fact-checking organizations across the US, France, Canada, Norway, Armenia, and other countries. The operation uses self-hosted, uncensored LLMs based on Meta's Llama 3 to generate, rewrite, and automate fictional news stories, deepfakes, and other false content targeting political leaders and audiences. At least 200 new websites have been linked to the campaign since January, including 35 registered in January and detected in April. The activity is connected to John Mark Dougan and to Moscow-linked entities and funding channels associated with the GRU.
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