A Daily Beast investigation has found that several websites set up to promote Russian propaganda and exploit U.S. racial and social divides live on servers registered to a man in Staten Island, New York.
The sites on Greenfloid LLC, which is registered to Sergey Kashyrin and two other men, include DoNotShoot.Us, which "pretended to be a voice for victims of police shootings," and BlackMattersUs.com:
The web services company owns under 250 IP addresses, some of which resolve to Russian propaganda sites and other fake news operations. Others are sites that could not be hosted at other providers, like “xxxrape.net.” There’s also a Russian trinket site called “soviet-power.com.” (The IP address that pointed to DoNotShoot.Us now resolves to a botnet and phishing operation, and is currently owned by Total Server Solutions LLC.)
The use of a tiny, no-questions-asked hosting company run by a man living in New York shows the Kremlin-backed troll farm’s brazen use of Americans and American companies to conduct its disinformation campaign.
The Daily Beast spoke with Kashyrin who "gave a string of answers, many of them contradictory."
One thing that’s clear, however: Greenfloid is more than just a stand-alone firm. Greenfloid is listed on the site of its Kharkiv, Ukraine-based parent company ITL as its North American division, and a number listed for Greenfloid dials into a Russian-language menu for ITL.
This isn’t the first time ITL has been called out over allegations its servers were used to host sites run by the Russian troll factory. It also hosted the website Whoiswhos.me, which revealed the identities and personal information of Russian opposition bloggers.
Read the full story: Russian Propaganda Hosted by Man on Staten Island, New York (Daily Beast)