Russia’s cyber-enabled influence operations (CEIO) have garnered significant public, academic and policy interest. 126 million Americans were reportedly exposed to Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 US election on Facebook. Indeed, to the extent that such efforts shape political outcomes, they may prove far more consequential than other, more flamboyant forms of cyber conflict. Importantly, CEIOs highlight the human dimension of cyber conflict. Focused on ‘hacking human minds’ and affecting individuals behind keyboards, as opposed to hacking networked systems, CEIOs represent an emergent form of state cyber activity. Importantly, data for studying CEIOs are often publicly available. We employ semantic network analysis (SNA) to assess data seldom analyzed in cybersecurity research – the text of actual advertisements from a prominent CEIO. We examine the content, as well as the scope and scale of the Russian-orchestrated social media campaign. While often described as ‘disinformation,’ our analysis shows that the information utilized in the Russian CEIO was generally factually correct. Further, it appears that African Americans, not white conservatives, were the target demographic that Russia sought to influence. We conclude with speculation, based on our findings, about the likely motives for the CEIO.

中文翻译：

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网络影响力行动成为网络冲突的“重心”：以俄罗斯外国干预 2016 年美国联邦大选为例

俄罗斯的网络影响力行动（CEIO）引起了公众、学术和政策的广泛关注。据报道，1.26 亿美国人在 Facebook 上了解到俄罗斯影响 2016 年美国大选的行为。事实上，就此类努力塑造政治结果而言，它们可能比其他更华丽的网络冲突形式更为重要。重要的是，首席执行官强调网络冲突的人为因素。CEIO 的重点是“侵入人类思想”并影响键盘后面的个人，而不是侵入网络系统，CEIO 代表了国家网络活动的一种新兴形式。重要的是，研究首席执行官的数据通常是公开的。我们采用语义网络分析 (SNA) 来评估网络安全研究中很少分析的数据——来自知名 CEO 的实际广告文本。我们研究了俄罗斯精心策划的社交媒体活动的内容以及范围和规模。虽然经常被描述为“虚假信息”，但我们的分析表明，俄罗斯 CEIO 使用的信息总体上是正确的。此外，俄罗斯寻求影响的目标人群似乎是非裔美国人，而不是白人保守派。根据我们的调查结果，我们对首席执行官可能的动机进行了猜测。