Two Twitter accounts of Russian Intelligence Officers have been suspended as they have been using accounts to spread fake information from hacked democrat systems and email accounts. A representative from Twitter has confirmed that the accounts @GUCCIFER_2 and @dcleaks are suspended after the alleged spreading of fake news.
The response came from the Justice Department after findings of 12 Russian intelligence officers were discovered trying to gain access to computers of Democrats to publish sensitive documents. The Russians have targeted Hilary Clinton’s campaign to leak sensitive documents using DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0.
This two-stage plan was started with a “spearphishing” attempt back in early 2016 with the Russians targeting more than 300 people connected to Hilary Clinton’s campaign. The Russian intelligence agents joined the website DCLeaks.com and started a Facebook page and Twitter feed saying that they were “American Hacktivists”. While Deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters said that there is no indication that hacking attempts have affected the campaign. Russia’s foreign ministry said there was no basis for the charges and the purpose of the detail is to spoil the environment before Monday’s summit.
Twitter also said millions of accounts were locked out due to unusual activity based on their follower counts. Twitter’s move to purge the locked records is bold as it will be a part of a comprehensive effort to safeguard the heightened scrutiny over fake news, disinformation and trolls.
Wall Street is anxious too. The Twitter stock tanked earlier this week over a report that the group had refused more than 70 million accounts in its endless battle against misinformation and other abuse. The company later clarified that most of the suspended records were inactive and therefore would not affect its closely watched regular active user metric.
