A Russian troll farm known as Storm-1516 was behind the creation and dissemination of a fake news story that alleged that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was responsible for a hit-and-run in 2011 that paralyzed a girl, Microsoft said in a report published on Sept. 17.
CBS News previously debunked the story, but Microsoft's report was the first indication that Russia was the source of the false news. The story was initially spread by a website disguised as a local San Francisco media outlet and included an embedded video that Microsoft said used a paid actor.
Warnings about Russian attempts to influence and interfere in the upcoming U.S. presidential election have increased in months. The Russian state-run media outlet RT, which the U.S. warned earlier in September is actively working with intelligence services in global influence campaigns, is seeking to push voters toward Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, U.S. officials said.
Storm-1516 is "adept at grabbing headlines with its outlandish fake videos and scandalous claims," Microsoft said. It and other Russian troll farms "will likely only escalate its targeting of the Harris-(Tim) Walz campaign in the lead-up to election day."
Beyond the influence campaigns, Microsoft said that "Russian cyber proxies and hacktivist groups" have also been involved in direct attacks on U.S. and EU election infrastructure, such as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on websites associated with elections for the EU parliament earlier in 2024.
The usage of such cyber proxies "offer(s) a method for potentially laundering compromising information garnered from a hack-and-leak operation while maintaining a veil of plausible deniability for the Kremlin," Microsoft said.
"Cyber proxies may also be employed for stoking fear of electoral disruption just before or on election day in November," the report added.
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