Active Measures, LLC

“Telegram’s Security Sham”

“…Telegram has cooperated with Russian authorities’ requests and “may” provide authorities with “selectors” like telephone numbers that can be used to develop further information, according to an unclassified FBI chart. All this while Telegram’s encryption protocol remains a proprietary secret.”

“Russian Influence Operations Are a Joke”

“Michael van Landingham, a former CIA analyst who authored the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, shares my skepticism. A Russia expert, he says Moscow has and will continue to work on American public opinion because they believe influence campaigns work (and because the U.S. acts as if they do).

“What impact these actions have is less clear, and painting the creation of YouTube videos as ‘psychological warfare’ on millions of Americans overstates the gravity of the threat. Unlike working with a [political] campaign in 2016, Russia is currently reduced to shoveling money at the US Internet’s most breathless voices, and trolling.”

“Russian trolling 2.0: How the Kremlin shifted tactics from its 2016 election strategy”

“The Russians thought that American media outlets would see Wikileaks as a relatively credible source of information, according to Michael van Landingham, a former CIA official who assessed the 2016 Russian activity.

“But now, in the absence of a current hack-and-leak campaign, Russia has reverted to the age-old tactic of supporting public voices that express views aligned with Russian messaging,” van Landingham said.”

“He Confirmed Russia Meddled in 2016 to Help Trump. Now, He’s Speaking Out”

Michael van Landingham wasn’t naive about what the Kremlin was capable of. His work as an intelligence analyst for the CIA had given him a front-row seat to the destruction that Russia’s spy services had wrought in places like Syria and Ukraine.

But this wasn’t about what Russia was doing in some far away country. 

Inside a room wrapped in a vault in the bowels of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, he read the intelligence showing that Moscow was trying to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

“Alexei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader and Fierce Putin Critic, Dead at 47”

“Navalny “continued to develop new ways to try to undermine the near total control Putin had on Russian life,” Michael Van Landingham, a former CIA Russia analyst, tells Rolling Stone.

“Navalny developed a means to fight Putin’s regime within the system that resonated with Russians’ exasperation with corrupt governance, first exposing shady business dealings and then flagrant embezzlement,” Van Landingham says.”

“Menendez Indictment Looks Like Egypt Recruiting Intelligence Source, Say Former Cia Officials”

“Michael van Landingham, a former CIA analyst, told The Intercept, “Reading the indictment, it certainly appears like the Egyptian government was using a classic source-recruitment pattern to get Menendez and his wife to spy for them.”

“As an analyst, when you receive a human source report, it comes with a sourcing statement that evaluates the source’s relative position, reliability, access to information, responsiveness to tasking, and track record,” said van Landingham, the former CIA analyst.”

“CIA Launches Effort to Recruit Russian Spies”

“Michael van Landingham, a former CIA analyst who runs the consultancy Active Measures LLC, also said that the ads could be thought of as “a marketing campaign in part to upset the Russian authorities.”

“They are the social media equivalent of a ‘cold pitch,’ where an intelligence officer approaches another without previous contact and asks them to volunteer information…”These pitches are aggressive and low yield, and mostly just create a headache for the officer who gets pitched because they must report the approach to their agency.”

“Inside the stunning growth of Russia’s Wagner Group”

“I think it’s always been clear that Wagner is acting as a parastatal arm of the Russian government,” said Michael van Landingham, a former Russia analyst for the CIA. “[They’re] deployed where the Russian government may not have the resources or may not see a direct interest but they can do it through Wagner.”

“Cybersecurity experts question Microsoft’s Ukraine report”

“Michael van Landingham, who was a Russia analyst for the CIA until 2019 and who now runs Active Measures, a research and analysis firm, also said the report’s lack of data undermines its findings. For example, he said, it was unclear how Microsoft determined that only 29 percent of Russia’s attempted cyber intrusions aimed at Ukraine succeeded.”

“Russia is quietly wielding its cyber weapons as its military struggles in Ukraine”

“Despite the scale of the destruction, Russia’s cyber component hasn’t been as robust or as visible as some expected — but it’s not absent, according to Michael E. van Landingham, a former Russia analyst at the CIA.

“I don’t think Russian cyber activity is more muted than expected,” van Landingham told Insider, pointing to “multiple” distributed denial-of-service attacks and “wiper” attacks, which remove data from devices, used by Russia against Ukrainian sectors.

“That said, many had perceptions of a cyber Armageddon bricking US and European computers or destroying Ukrainian critical infrastructure. That probably didn’t happen because Putin wanted to fight a limited war in Ukraine…”

“Sen. Bob Menendez Embraces GOP Proposal To Sanction Russia Immediately, Rankling White House”

“The White House prefers to maintain flexibility to punish or reward Russia and tailor sanctions so they don’t bite allies,” van Landingham added, warning of the unintended consequences that sanctions could have on European partners if not crafted properly.”

“How the Kremlin provides a safe harbor for ransomware”

“Like almost any major industry in Russia, (cybercriminals) work kind of with the tacit consent and sometimes explicit consent of the security services,” said Michael van Landingham, a former CIA analyst who runs the consultancy Active Measures LLC.

“Sanctioned Russian IT firm was partner with Microsoft, IBM”

Former CIA analyst Michael van Landingham applauded the naming and sanctioning of Russian IT companies known to have aided and abetted malign government activity.

“Naming specific companies can create incentives for educated and skilled Russians who might be able to obtain jobs elsewhere where they don’t support Russian state hacking,” he said.

“Fewer opportunities and a changed political environment in the U.S. may have curbed Moscow’s election interference this year, analysts say”

“The email content really wasn’t about Joe Biden himself,” said Michael Van Landingham, a former CIA political analyst who worked on the 2017 intelligence-community assessment on Russian interference. “It was a stretch to make a connection between the candidate and the leaked information.”