Ukrainians seize five bot farms used to spread fake news and panic

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian officials have dismantled five bot farms.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said bot farms were set up by Russian special services to carry out large-scale misinformation operations to destabilize the internal situation in Ukraine.

The farms were found in Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Ternopil, and Zakarpattia. Threat actors set up and used over 100,000 fake social media accounts to spread disinformation about the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine to ignite ‘panic among Ukrainian citizens and destabilize social and political situation in various regions.’

SBU seized over 100 sets of GSM gateways, almost 10,000 SIM cards, laptops, and other computing devices.

Photos shared by the SBU also show mobile phones, USB drives, and weapons.

It appears that SBU hasn’t arrested anyone responsible for the campaign, saying ‘urgent investigative actions are underway to bring to justice those involved in the crime.’

Russian invasion

Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, kicking off a now month-long war.

In light of the attack, the hacker community started rallying to help Ukrainians. With Anonymous being the most prominent one, numerous hacker groups and researchers partake in various campaigns to help Ukraine. The country has also called hackers to join its 'IT Army.'

Cyber activists targeted Russian government websites, Russian state-controlled media outlets TASS, Kommersant, Izvestia, Fontanka, and RBC, pushing them offline. Russian carrier Aeroflot and major lender Sberbank were also experiencing outages and access issues.

Russian nuclear agency Rosatom and the country's space agency Roscosmos were breached by hacktivists protesting the war in Ukraine.

The German branch of the Anonymous collective also claims to have stolen 20 terabytes of data from the German arm of Rosneft, Russia's state energy company.

According to the United Nations, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the 'fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.' Over 10 million people were displaced due to the conflict, with over 3.8 million fleeing the country.