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Internet Army Report Card: 'A' For Effort 'F' For Achievement
The
Ukrainian Information Army suffered defeat after defeat after its
ambitious start, but now it may have Crimea's famous prosecutor on
its side.
6
March, 2015
Things
are not going well for the Ukrainian Information Army. Only 10 days
after it rallied its troops against the phantom menace and unleashed
an attack of the clones, it had to face the revenge of the hackers.
CyberBerkut, the Ukrainian hacker group opposed to the current
government managed to crash the Information Army's website for
several hours on Thursday, breaking through its CloudFlare protection
and also released a few embarrassing emails revealing the Army's
internal practices.
Here
is the story of the Ukrainian Information Army so far:
1.
The Phantom Menace: Ukraine Rallies its Troops
Most
of this chapter of Information Minister Yuri Stets' saga has been
covered in a previous article. Fearing the victory of "Russian
propaganda" in the media and, more importantly, needing to
justify his new ministry's multi-million dollar budget, Stets
announced the creation of the Ukrainian Information Army.
2.
Attack of the Clones: The Disastrous LifeNews Offensive
One
of the first methodical guides sent out by the Information Army was a
guide on creating clone accounts. The guide told Internet warriors to
register a new email and use it to create social media accounts with
Russian names and profile pictures, completely filled out profiles
and at least 10 friends. A second guide gave a list of arguments to
use in arguments against Russian users, which it called Kremlin bots
and trolls:
"More
than anything Russians fear Ukrainian success. Every successful
reform makes them think that Ukraine is becoming strong. Because of
that, any positive changes, government decisions and innovations have
to be actively shared and discussed in discussions with trolls."
Unfortunately
for Stets, the attack on the Russian tabloid LifeNews, which began on
February 25, coincided with the collapse of the Ukrainian currency,
so understandably, many Ukraine-related articles on LifeNews were
about Ukraine's economic problems and its declining standard of
living. As a result, the rather mundane article "Kiev Stores
Limit Sales of Grains, Flour and Sugar," which cited Ukrainian
media, became the third most-discussed article on the website.
Trying
to combat "propaganda" with the "truth," warriors
were forced to admit that prices had risen, and that some stores were
short on food, but as in Ukrainian official discourse, they could
offer nothing in return other than blaming Russia and Putin for their
troubles. Russian users were not very impressed, and the
much-anticipated comment war that would turn the tide in public
opinion never happened.
A
few days later, attacks ceased and instead of assignments, the
Information Army began sending lists of articles from Ukrainian
media, telling subscribers to "Share this information in social
networks among your friends and acquaintances."
3.
Revenge of the Hacker: CyberBerkut Reveals Army's Father
On
Thursday, CyberBerkut hacked the Ukrainian Information Army and
disclosed emails which from the project which showed that it was
facing problems from the beginning. A member of the project, Artem
Bidenko emailed the team:
"Aren't
we afraid that our assignments will be leaked and analyzed in detail
on LifeNews and Russia-24?
Do
you understand that IO [information operations] and PSYOPs
[psychologial operations] are called that because they are not
disclosed in terms of assignments or the source/client?
To
not even mention that bloggers and the Internet community will just
laugh at out non-professionalism."
The
hacker group also found the project's organizers, including blogger
Oleksandr Baraboshko, who brags about meeting the US Ambassador to
Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on his Instagram.
CyberBerkut
then pulled the Information Army's site down, which made the team
issue a rebuttal through the third-party mass-email service
GetResponse, which CyberBerkut did not manage to hack.
"As
you can see, we are alive, well and on the line," the message
read. The website came back online several hours later.
4.
A New Hope?
Following
the failure of the project, the Information Army is not losing hope.
After a (fake) Twitter account of Crimean prosecutor Natalia
Poklonskaya wished her followers a good morning in Ukrainian, the
Information Army appears to have decided that she has joined their
side (or was "hacked").
The
Information Army has also opened an English version of its website in
addition to the Ukrainian one, suggesting that a second wave of
mobilization may soon be underway.
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