Collateral damage of Trump's extreme declassifications; squaring up to Russian propaganda; the most devastating cyberattack in history

an assault on the rebel-held area of Idlib. The prospect of another chemical-weapon attack has already led to a U.S. threat of missile strikes in retaliation, with President Trump tweeting a warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But there’s another weapon being deployed. Russia has begun laying the groundwork for an online influence operation aimed at turning U.S. public opinion against such a strike. How would this Twitter campaign unfold? Here’s what we learned from our recent analysis of a database of over 850,000 tweets collected following the April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria.
We uncovered a major increase — approximately 300 percent — in the creation of new Twitter accounts shortly after the Douma attack. We scrutinized these new accounts — and concluded that at least 44 percent of them were disinformation accounts, almost certainly controlled by Russia.
Some 11 percent of all accounts from this time frame were suspended, likely during Twitter’s sweeping ban of 70 million accounts this year. As a result, our figures may be conservative; fake accounts, such as the ones in our study, were specifically targeted for removal.

Russian propaganda? Moscow releases audio blaming Ukraine for downing of MH17 flight that killed almost 300 (Cristina Maza, Newsweek)
More than four years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people onboard, Moscow said it had evidence that Kiev committed the crime rather than pro-Russian separatists, as international investigators had previously concluded. Russia’s Ministry of Defense held a press conference on Monday that aimed to cast doubt on Moscow’s culpability for the tragedy. Officials addressing the event said the evidence international investigators had used to blame Russia for the crash on July 17, 2014, was fraudulent. International investigators had previously presented videos of the missile that allegedly shot down the plane being moved from Russia into Ukraine, but Moscow now claimed it had evidence that the videos were fabricated.

Russia’s been meddling with a US ally in Europe, and Mattis isn’t happy (Business Insider)
US Secretary of Defense James Mattis accused Russia of attempting to meddle in an upcoming vote that would pave the way for Macedonia to join NATO. Russia opposes the country’s push to join the European alliance. The meddling attempts, which Russia denies, include a disinformation campaign meant to suppress voter turnout.

British broadcasters told to square up to Russian propaganda (Christopher Williams, Telegraph)
The Government will today urge the BBC and rival broadcasters to do more to challenge Russian propaganda in the wake of the Salisbury attack, alongside a rallying cry that a “strong media means a strong democracy and a strong nation.” Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright will use a speech to the television industry to call for action against the spread of disinformation, in return for more support navigating the shift to online streaming and the rise of Netflix.

Trump-proof aspects of Manafort deal rankle lawyers (Josh Gerstein, Politico)
Robert Mueller seems to have built in safeguards to discourage the president from pardoning Manafort.

Ruminations on the most devastating cyberattack in history (Mark Weatherford, Cipher Brief)
A recent article titled, The Untold Story of NotPetya, The Most Devastating Cyberattack in History came out a few weeks ago and I’ve been ruminating on it ever since.  It bothered me because while the NotPetya ransomware attack is old news if you are in the cybersecurity business, there is a lot of new and really interesting information in this piece. This story by Andy Greenberg, focuses on Maersk, the largest container ship and supply vessel operator in the world, and reveals some things that most of us weren’t aware of until now.  Like many cybersecurity tales of woe, it reads like a Robert Ludlum thriller and will leave you wanting more.

How Mnuchin’s blunder led to sanctions against Putin oligarch Oleg Deripaska (Andrew Desiderio and Erin Banco, Daily Beast)
A slip of the tongue at a congressional hearing forced Treasury officials to scramble to come up with a sanctions plan to match what was said.