Ukrainian hacktivists have breached the Department of Information and Mass Communications (DIMC) of the Russian Ministry of Defence, headed by Igor Konashenkov, and gained access to the Russian media monitoring and analytics system Katyusha.
“Employees of the department and the press services of the military districts and fleets under its control are constantly analyzing the Russian information field. Everything that is directly or indirectly related to news about the activities of the Russian Armed Forces is reflected in various reports. The publications of foreign media are analyzed separately,” reads a report from Ukrainian intelligence community Inform Napalm.
Documents obtained by the Cyber Resistance hackers shed light on the apparent disconnection between the Russian Defense Ministry's Information Department and the actual state of affairs. The retrieved documentation indicates that the department, responsible for disseminating information about the Russian Armed Forces, is operating in a manner that is far removed from reality.
Employees of the Information Department, along with press services of Russian military districts and fleets under its purview, engage in constant analysis of the Russian information space. Reports are meticulously compiled, encompassing everything directly or indirectly linked to news concerning the activities of the Russian Armed Forces. Foreign media publications are also scrutinized separately as part of this comprehensive analysis.
The department prepares detailed daily reports, including transcripts of all propaganda releases for the day. These reports are then sent to higher authorities for approval, notably to Konashenkov. The approved document then is sent out along with the Russian Armed Forces’ planned information events for the next week and a weekly report on the print media outlets to all heads of press services of districts, branches of the armed forces, fleets, etc.
To sift through colossal amounts of information the ministry uses the information and analytical system for online media monitoring Katyusha developed by the Moscow-based information technology firm M13. Besides Katyusha, M13 offers Arsenal and Arena monitoring and analytics systems.
The company’s website indicated that its “IT solutions” were used by “the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, federal ministries and departments, regional state executive bodies, commercial companies and public organizations.”
In December 2021, the US Department of Justice charged several M13 employees, Vladislav Klyushin, Ivan Ermakov and Nikolai Rumiantcev, over a multi-million dollar hack-to-trade scheme. In September of this year, Klyushin was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
Katyusha is a Russian counterpart of SemanticForce media monitoring system. It claims to offer a wide array of features, including media monitoring 24/7 (40,000 sources, Russian federal and regional media, Russian-language and “key” media abroad); options to sort information by time, topics, headings, named objects and types of media; assessment of information based on sentiment and audience coverage; monitoring of key Russian print media; monitoring of both traditional and new (social) media; displaying the main information events of the day, week or selected period; detection of coordinated information attacks.
However, the analysis showed that Katyusha “is a kind of window dressing tool”. While it serves its purpose of gathering information, it incorrectly reflects the tone of the messages. Negative reports about the Russian Armed Forces and the military and political leadership of the Russian Federation are either disregarded or marked as neutral.
“The system analyzes mainly the Russian information space. Western and Ukrainian media are present in the database, but they must be searched manually. They do not affect the overall picture. Any analysis is predominantly based on the Russian sources, which are subject to censorship and self-censorship,” the report said.
The system does see negative news reports, however, for one “negative” report, the extensive Russian propaganda machine throws in dozens of “positive” ones, effectively switching attention and shifting emphasis.