127 Disinformation for Sale

Disinformation campaigns are in the news. Starting with the 2016 U.S. election cycle, continuing in 2018, and now looking ahead to 2020, the threat of online influence operations from foreign adversaries has been top of mind — but there’s a different kind of disinformation for sale on the dark web. Researchers from Recorded Future’s Insikt Group engaged with two threat actors selling their wares on Russian-speaking underground forums. They discovered that disinformation campaigns are readily available, not terribly expensive, and potentially highly effective. Roman Sannikov is director of analyst services at Recorded Future, and he shares what they found.