The Russians “target you and see what you like, what you click on, and see if you’re sympathetic or not sympathetic,” says a senior intelligence official. That is what Moscow is doing, more than a dozen senior intelligence officials and others investigating Russia’s influence operations tell TIME. Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior. Other algorithms can determine those groups’ hot-button issues and identify “followers” among them, pinpointing those most susceptible to suggestion. American researchers have found they can use mathematical formulas to segment huge populations into thousands of subgroups according to defining characteristics like religion and political beliefs or taste in TV shows and music. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow’s hackers to take control of the victim’s phone or computer–and Twitter account.

Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter. It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary email hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. But the report in early March was something new. and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia’s multipronged scheme. For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. counterintelligence officials in Washington. On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of U.S.

Russian hacking sites