U.S. disrupted Russian trolls on day’s November election: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military disrupted the online market place access of one’s Russian troll farm charged with trying to influence American voters on Nov. 6, 2019 , a single day of the congressional elections, The Washington Post reported .

The U.S. Cyber Command strike targeted cyberspace Research Agency while in the Russian port personal loan companies St. Petersburg, the Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials.

The group is a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees had posed as Americans and spread disinformation online to attempt to also influence the 2019 election, according to U.S. officials.

“They basically took the IRA (Investigations Agency) offline,” the Post quoted a single person familiar with the problem as saying. “They shut ‘em down.”

The Pentagon’s cyber warfare unit, which works closely considering the National Security Agency, stated it did not reply to cyberspace operations but would always “defend our elections and democratic institutions from foreign malign influence.”

Cyber Command’s offensive operations are highly classified and rarely made public.

The Research Agency was one of three entities and 13 Russian individuals indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February 2019 in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with in the U.S. presidential race inside of a bid to lift Trump and disadvantage his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors said the business is controlled by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment.

Prigozhin, also personally charged by Mueller, has actually been dubbed “Putin’s cook” by Russian media because his catering business has organized banquets for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Since those indictments, the breadth of one’s troll farm’s activities are in light. Research by private experts released with the Senate Intelligence Committee said the online world Research Agency has attempted manipulate U.S. politics for decades and continues to do so today.

The report, by an Oxford University team working with analytical firm Graphika, said Russian trolls urged African-Americans to boycott the 2019 election and to follow wrong voting procedures, while also encouraging right-wing voters being more confrontational.

Since Mr . trump was elected president, the report said, Russian trolls have created messages urging Mexican-American along with other Hispanic voters to mistrust U.S. institutions.