Thousands of fake Twitter accounts are being used to drown out activists and bloggers protesting the recent presidential elections in Russia. 


Widespread reports of ballot stuffing and voting irregularities prompted thousands of Russians to demonstrate in Moscow’s wintry Triumfalnaya Square. Hundreds were subsequently arrested by Russian security forces, including well-known anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.
Kremlin Twitter ‘bots target Russian oppositionProtestors began tweeting anti-Kremlin sentiments using the hashtag #Ñ‚Ñ€Ð¸ÑƒÐ¼Ñ„Ð°Ð»ÑŒÐ½Ð°Ñ (Triumfalnaya), which quickly became one of the most-used hashtags on Twitter. 


But as Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro notes, it wasn’t long before #Triumfalnaya messages were drowned out by loud, pro-Kremlin tweets trumpeted by countless Twitter bots. 


“If you check this hash tag on twitter you’ll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day,” said Goncharov.


“To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour. Whether the attack was supported officially or not is not relevant, but we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech.”
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