Patrick Tucker

Russia will temporarily shut off many of its citizens’ access to the global Internet in a test of its controversial RuNet program, according to an internal government document. RuNet aims to boost the government’s ability to better control internal digital traffic, launch cyber and information attacks against other nations, and track and censor dissidents. The test will evaluate “the possibility of intercepting subscriber traffic and revealing information about the subscriber, blocking communication services,” according to a Dec.

The same Kremlin-backed group that hacked the Pentagon, State Department, and Democratic National Committee targeted DC insiders the week of August 22. One of the Russia-backed hacker groups that attacked Democratic computer networks also attacked several Russia-focused think tanks in Washington (DC).

The perpetrator is the group called COZY BEAR, or APT29, one of the two groups that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed for the DNC hack, according to founder Dmitri Alperovitch. CrowdStrike discovered the attack on the DNC and provides security for the think tanks. Alperovitch said fewer than five organizations and 10 staffers researching Russia were hit by the “highly targeted operation.” He declined to detail which think tanks and researchers were hit, out of concern for his clients’ interests and to avoid revealing tools and techniques or other data to hackers. CrowdStrike alerted the organizations immediately after the company detected the breaches and intruders were unable to exfiltrate any information, Alperovitch said.

Cornell University said the Facebook emotion study received no external funding, but it turns out that the university is currently receiving Defense Department money for some extremely similar-sounding research -- the analysis of social network posts for “sentiment,” i.e. how people are feeling, in the hopes of identifying social “tipping points.”

It’s the sort of work that the US military has been funding for years, most famously via the open-source indicators program, an Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) program that looked at Twitter to predict social unrest.

Defense One recently caught up with Lt Gen Michael Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who said the US military has “completely revamped” the way it collects intelligence around the existence of large, openly available data sources and especially social media like Facebook.

“The information that we’re able to extract form social media -- it’s giving us insights that frankly we never had before,” he said. In other words, the head of one of the biggest US military intelligence agencies needs you on Facebook.