On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of U.S. counterintelligence officials in Washington. For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. In offices in both D.C. and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia’s multipronged scheme. But the report in early March was something new.
It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary email hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter. The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow’s hackers to take control of the victim’s phone or computer–and Twitter account.
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WNU Editor: So (according to Time) by influencing a few thousand Twitter and other social media accounts .... Russia was able to overcome the impact of tens of millions of followers of social media accounts that belong to President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democrat Party .... as well as overcoming the news coverage from the main stream media (i.e. New York Times, Washington Post,L.A. Times, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, FOX , CNBC, etc.). Hmmmm .... I am sceptical .... but a lot of people have bought into this unhesitatingly.