The Russia watchRussian trolls dupe good Americans; did Russia swing 2016 election?; Baltic states fight back, and more

Lawmakers look to fortify federal cyber defenses ahead of 2018 midterms (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers have introduced legislation aimed at strengthening U.S. infrastructure ahead of midterm elections this fall.

James Clapper in new book: “Of course” the Russians “swung the election to a Trump win” (Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics)
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper writes in his new book, “Facts and Fears” that he has “no doubt” the Russian influence campaign swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

How Russians trolls dupe good Americans (Jerry Zremski, Buffalo News)
Gloria is a good person, a good Buffalonian. She’s middle-aged and single, and she works every day at a job where she gets to help other people. To borrow Bill Clinton’s phrase, she’s the kind of person who works hard and plays by the rules. She’s also the sort of person who got duped into spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential election.

Russia waging ‘great hybrid war’ against Poland: report (Radio Poland)
Moscow is pulling out all the stops in a disinformation war against Poland, according to Polish website niezalezna.pl.

Who’s the best at holding the front line? (StopFake,org)
In the context of major election campaigns, resonant events such as Sergei Skripal’s poisoning and the Western preparation for important military steps, the armies of Kremlin trolls have become more active than ever. For example, as the US has been preparing to punish Bashar al-Assad who carried out a chemical attack against his own citizens, the Pentagon has registered a 2 000 per cent increase in the activity of Kremlin trolls. A Czech think tank will publish a report where the member countries of European Union will be classified according to how successful they are at fighting against Kremlin’s disinformation.

Russia’s campaign to help Trump win was just the start (Denise Clifton, Mother Jones)
And the next social-media attack on US elections could come from within.

Baltic governments respond to growing Russian spy threat (Paul Goble, Eurasia Daily Monitor)
The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania face an increasingly large espionage threat from the Russian Federation. Naturally, this threat includes the introduction or recruitment of Russian agents to engage in classical espionage activities like ferreting out classified information from government sources. But it is particularly dangerous in the Baltic States because some of these clandestine activities are designed to lay the groundwork for potential diversionary attacks by Russian agents against key local infrastructure targets. This kind of sabotage would seriously undermine the defense of these countries by their own militaries and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), thus helping facilitate a possible Russian advance.

Austria’s tilt toward Russia worries intelligence experts (Alexander Smith and Andy Eckardt, NBC News)
A pro-Moscow party is responsible for Austria’s intelligence services, raising fears that Western secrets might be leaked to Vladimir Putin’s government.

Who’s afraid of Kaspersky? (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Motherboard)
We went to Kaspersky Lab’s SAS conference, where the controversial Russian anti-virus firm showcases its best research, wines and dines competitors and journalists, and burns American espionage operations.

Researchers uncover sophisticated botnet aimed at possible attack inside Ukraine (Chris Bing, Cyberscoop)
A massive hacking operation that’s co-opted more than 500,000 routers into a botnet looms over Ukraine, according to cybersecurity researchers and people familiar with the matter who spoke with CyberScoop.

All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far (Andrew Prokop, Vox)
That we know of.

U.S. government can’t get controversial Kaspersky Lab software off its networks (Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen, Daily Beast)
The law says American agencies must eliminate the use of Kaspersky Lab software by October. U.S. officials say that’s impossible—it’s embedded too deep in our infrastructure.