PerspectiveRussia’s Election Hackers Are Back—and Targeting George Soros
The Russian intelligence agency behind 2016’s election attacks is training its sights on billionaire financier George Soros. The move comes hot on the heels of a surge in U.S.-focused hacking by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate with similarities to 2016 in targeting and methodology. The Kremlin’s targeting of Soros and his organization carries echoes of 2016, when the GRU dumped 2,500 files stolen from the Open Society Foundations for the debut of “DC Leaks”, the fake leak site the spies created for their 2016 election interference campaign.
The Russian intelligence agency behind 2016’s election attacks is training its sights on billionaire financier George Soros, the Daily Beast has learned. The move comes hot on the heels of a surge in U.S.-focused hacking by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate with similarities to 2016 in targeting and methodology.
The Kremlin’s targeting of Soros and his organization carries echoes of 2016, when the GRU dumped 2,500 files stolen from the Open Society Foundations for the debut of “DC Leaks”, the fake leak site the spies created for their 2016 election interference campaign.
Some of the stolen files were reportedly altered to create the appearance that Soros was secretly financing Russian opposition candidates, making the leak politically useful to Vladmir Putin. Kevin Poulsen writes in the Daily Beast that, more importantly, the Soros dump earned DC Leaks instant credibility in American right-wing circles, where the 88-year-old Hungarian-American philanthropist plays the role of villainous global puppet-master in countless conspiracy theories.
Russia’s Internet Research Agency—the so-called “troll farm, later indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—pushed the same trope on its Facebook and Instagram feeds in the run-up to election day. One meme featured a close-up of Soros against a backdrop of anti-Trump picketers. “No lives matter for those who sponsoring [sic] anti Trump protests,” the caption read. Another imagined Soros confronting the late Senator John McCain. “Hey Johnny, I’m paying you a fortune. I don’t care how much cancer you have, get back to DC and backstab Trump.”
Experts caution that Russia’s hackers have always cast a wide net, and there’s no way to tell what their motives are in revisiting old haunts now. It may be pure intelligence gathering, or the opening salvo of a 2020 election interference campaign.
