Ukraine destroys a massive bot farm and seizes 150,000 SIM cards.
The Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine has dismantled another massive bot farm, linked to more than 100 people, after investigations in nearly twenty locations.
The bots were used to promote Russian propaganda justifying Russia's war in Ukraine, disseminate illegal content and personal information, and engage in various other fraudulent activities.
In a joint operation, the Cyber Police and units of the Ukrainian National Police conducted 21 search operations in Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, and Lviv.
Computer equipment, mobile phones, over 250 GSM gateways and approximately 150,000 SIM cards from multiple mobile phone providers were seized.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russian threat actors have engaged in disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine and have invested in Ukraine-based bot farms.
In September 2022, for example, the Cyberspace Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) destroyed another army of thousands of bots that were spreading Russian disinformation across multiple messaging platforms and social networks.
In August 2022, Ukrainian cyber police dismantled a massive bot farm that included more than 1,000,000 bots, which were also used to spread Russian disinformation and fake news on social networks.
Months earlier, SSU also announced that it had shut down five fake news networks controlling over 100,000 fake social media.
These disinformation bot farms operated from Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Ternopil, and Zakarpattia to discourage Ukrainians and cause panic by promoting false information about the alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also been the target of several disinformation campaigns, two of which promoted deepfakes on Facebook and hacked Ukrainian radio stations to spread false news that Zelenskyy was in critical condition. Both campaigns are believed to be carried out by Russian threat actors.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
