CONNECTING DOTS

Researchers Show Faked Documents Campaign Pointing to Russia

Citizen Lab found phishing, leaking overlaps with known Russian actors.

A new report by The Citizen Lab, a global information-security project at the University of Toronto, demonstrates that an international cyberespionage campaign involving email phishing attacks and leaked falsified documents points back to Russia. While the assessment contains no strict “smoking gun,” as the CBC reports, a great amount of overlap with previously known Russian activities raises serious questions about Moscow’s involvement. The report, called Tainted Leaks, shows how authentic stolen documents were manipulated and then leaked in order to achieve political goals via misinformation. One notable example includes exiled Russian journalist David Satter, whose emails were stolen, modified, and selectively published online. (Satter has been a contributor to The Daily Beast.) The same actor who leaked Satter’s emails, according to The Citizen Lab, targeted 218 other distinct users across 39 different countries. Those targets include “a former Russian prime minister, members of cabinets from Europe and Eurasia, ambassadors, high ranking military officers, CEOs of energy companies,” and others.