Summary

Operation Overload, a Russia-aligned influence operation, is aggressively targeting the 2024 US presidential election. Using fake news, fact-checking sites, and AI-generated audio, it seeks to manipulate public opinion by impersonating trusted media organizations. This campaign primarily targets media outlets, fact-checkers, and researchers, aiming to overwhelm investigative resources and insert false narratives into mainstream discourse, but also directly targets the general public. Operation Overload previously attempted to undermine the 2024 French elections and the Paris Olympics, although with minimal success. Its goal now is to undermine trust in the US election process, exploit divisive social issues, stoke fears of political violence, and target candidates, particularly Vice President Kamala Harris.

Operation Overload, also known as Matryoshka and Storm-1679, is a sophisticated Russia-aligned influence campaign designed to manipulate public opinion and sow discord. Previously attempting to undermine the 2024 French elections and the Paris Olympics, the operation is now shifting its focus to the 2024 US presidential election. It involves creating fake news sites, false fact-checking resources, and AI-generated audio that mimics legitimate media outlets. By impersonating trusted news organizations, the operation seeks to establish credibility to influence its targets more effectively.

Key Tactics and Techniques

1. Impersonation of Trusted Media Brands: Operation Overload relies heavily on impersonating reputable news outlets to lend credibility to its influence operations. By copying logos, using similar fonts and layouts, and falsely attributing content to real journalists, it creates content that appears legitimate. This includes recycling video and image materials from publicly available sources and generating professional-sounding AI-generated voiceovers.
2. AI-Generated Content: One of the newer developments in Operation Overload's toolkit is the use of AI to generate realistic voiceovers. This content, often used in short videos, further amplifies its perceived credibility and makes it more challenging to differentiate between legitimate and fake information.
3. Targeting of Media and Fact-Checking Organizations: Operation Overload directs much of its focus toward media organizations, fact-checkers, and researchers. By flooding them with spam-like requests and fake fact-checking leads, the operation seeks to overwhelm their resources. This makes it harder for them to debunk Russian disinformation and risks them inadvertently reporting on false content, thereby injecting Russian malign narratives into mainstream political discourse.
4. Amplification Through Automated Social Media: The operation also utilizes automated bots to spread its influence content on social media. This tactic, referred to as coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB), helps amplify false narratives on social media platforms, making the content more widespread and visible to the general public.

The Role of AI in Operation Overload

One of the newer developments of Operation Overload is its reliance on AI-generated audio. AI is being used to create voiceovers and make fake media content appear to be from legitimate media outlets. This allows for the rapid production of high-quality disinformation at scale, making it more challenging to detect and debunk.

Impacts on the 2024 US Election

The operation's primary goal is to overwhelm journalists and fact-checkers with persistent, spam-like requests to verify the operation’s inauthentic content, diverting resources from pursuing legitimate investigations and debunking Russian disinformation. The operation also hopes to use media organizations as a means of information laundering, more specifically, to inject malign content and pro-Kremlin narratives into mainstream political discourse via trusted parties. Finally, the operation seeks to directly inject influence content into mainstream discussion of contentious political issues, eroding public trust in the democratic process, provoking US domestic concerns of political violence and “civil war”, and exploiting existing social divisions.

Some of the narratives pushed by Operation Overload include:

• Stoking Fears of Political Violence: By amplifying concerns about civil unrest and even civil war, the operation seeks to provoke fear and uncertainty.
• Targeting Candidates: Vice President Harris, in particular, is a major target of the operation's disinformation efforts. Content falsely links her to a wide range of scandals, aiming to damage her reputation ahead of the election.
• Vilifying Ukrainians and the LGBTQIA+ Community: The operation provokes negative sentiment toward these communities to decrease public support for Ukraine and exploit social divisions in the US, respectively.

Mitigations

Mitigating the potential effects of Operation Overload requires a coordinated effort between media organizations, fact-checkers, researchers, and policymakers. Here are key steps that can be taken:

1. Monitoring Social Media Channels: Potentially targeted organizations should regularly monitor Telegram and social media channels identified in this report as promoting Operation Overload content, using appropriate operational security measures.
2. Strengthening Fact-Checking Protocols: Media organizations should strengthen verification processes and source authentication measures where possible to prevent the unintentional spread of Operation Overload content.
3. Information Sharing: These organizations should also enhance information-sharing and coordination with their peers and the broader counter-influence community to decrease the likelihood of publishing a false fact-checking lead or inadvertently overexerting resources to pursue a deceptive lead.
4. Public Awareness and Media Literacy: Public education about how influence operations work is crucial. The general public needs to be aware of how to identify false information and be more discerning about the sources it trusts.
5. Recorded Future Intelligence Cloud: Media entities, researchers, and public sector organizations can use the Recorded Future Intelligence Cloud to track research developments and other analyses of Operation Overload’s emerging narratives ahead of the 2024 US election and its continued activities in Europe. Defenders can also use the Recorded Future Intelligence Cloud to monitor developments in previously documented and emerging influence operations from nation-state adversaries.
6. Recorded Future Brand Intelligence: Media organizations can use Recorded Future Brand Intelligence to track and combat brand abuse, including attempted typosquatting and logo impersonation.

Outlook

As the 2024 US election draws nearer, Operation Overload is very likely to ramp up its activities. The operation's administrators are expected to impersonate more media outlets and expand their reach. We expect Operation Overload to continue attempting to fuel polarization in the US by pushing narratives that deepen existing divisions on controversial issues and discredit key political figures like Vice President Harris and, to a much lesser extent, former President Donald Trump.

As Insikt Group continues to track growing concerns regarding election security and integrity, Operation Overload will likely amplify conspiracy theories around voter fraud and rigged elections, posing as legitimate media, to undermine confidence in the democratic process.

To read the entire analysis, click here to download the report as a PDF.