Kamala Harris's bid for the US presidency has become a key target of Russian disinformation campaigners, according to Microsoft.
Groups aligned with or backed by the Kremlin have shifted noticeably from targeting only the Republican campaign of nominee Donald Trump to Ms Harris's campaign alongside her vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, a Microsoft cybersecurity report released on Tuesday said.
Microsoft identified two Russian actors, called Storm-1516 and Storm-1679, responsible for creating deepfake or misleading videos published online.
The goal, according to the report, was to "sow discord and spread disinformation" about Ms Harris and her campaign as the 2024 Democratic nominee.
Storm-1516, labelled a "Kremlin-aligned troll farm" produced a deepfake video that used an actor to re-enact a claim about Ms Harris being involved in a hit-and-run accident in 2011 that allegedly paralysed a young girl.
The accident in question never occurred, and the group used a newly set up site pretending to be a local San Franciscan media outlet to distribute the video.
Another video created by Storm-1516 showed an alleged attack on a Trump rally attendee by Harris supporters, which also never occurred.
Both videos received millions of views.
Microsoft said the decision of Joe Biden to retire from the 2024 presidential race meant the Russian disinformation groups "initially struggled" to refocus, but had pivoted to the Harris-Walz campaign in the last two months.
The second disinformation group, Storm-1679, also posted videos promoting conspiracy theories and inaccurate claims about Ms Harris's policies.
"Disseminating conspiracies leveraging divisive social issues is part of Storm-1679's playbook for driving engagement with content," Microsoft said.
A number of other disinformation and hacking campaigns coming from Russia are targeting the US election, according to the report, many of which function covertly to spread influence online.
Microsoft also noted Chinese and Iranian-linked groups focusing on the 2024 US elections and targeting both the Democrat and Republican campaigns.
An escalation in inaccurate claims from groups like Storm-1679 in the weeks leading up to the November 5 poll was likely, the report said.
Meta bans Russia state media
Tech company Meta announced a ban on Russian state media networks RT, Rossiya Segodnya and others from its social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, claiming the outlets had tried to carry out covert influence operations online.
The ban is a sharp escalation in measures by the world's biggest social media company against Russian state media, after years of more limited steps such as blocking the outlets from running ads and reducing the reach of their posts.
Meta said the entities were banned from its apps globally for "foreign interference activity" in a statement on Monday.
A spokesperson for YouTube also said the company terminated over 230 channels affiliated with Rossiya Segodnya and AVO TV Novosti, which were already blocked from viewers.
Prior to the ban, RT had more than 7.2 million followers on Facebook and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.
The Kremlin heavily criticised the move, saying Meta was "discrediting itself with these actions".
Moscow branded Meta an "extremist" organisation in 2022 and blocked Instagram and Facebook, objecting to changes in Meta's hate speech policy designed to allow users to vent their anger over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
ABC/Reuters
