Joint Cyber Advisory: State-Sponsored Russian Media Leverages Meliorator Software

Summary 

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), in partnership with the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), Netherlands Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), the Netherlands Police (DNP), and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), (hereinafter referred to as the authoring organizations) are releasing this advisory to warn social media companies that Russian state-sponsored actors have leveraged the covert Meliorator software for foreign malign influence activity benefiting the Russian Government.

Affiliates of RT (formerly Russia Today), a Russian state-sponsored media organization, used Meliorator—a covert artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced software package—to create fictitious online personas, representing a number of nationalities, to post content on X (formerly Twitter). Using this tool, RT affiliates disseminated disinformation to and about a number of countries, including the United States, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, and Israel. 

Although the tool was only identified on X, the authoring organizations’ analysis of Meliorator indicated the developers intended to expand its functionality to other social media platforms. The authoring organizations’ analysis also indicated the tool is capable of the following:

• Creating authentic appearing social media personas en masse;
• Deploying content similar to typical social media users;
• Mirroring disinformation of other bot personas; 
• Perpetuating the use of pre-existing false narratives to amplify malign foreign influence; and
• Formulating messages, to include the topic and framing, based on the specific archetype of the bot.

View the detailed advisory below.