| Even though the parliamentary election campaign
and the mudslinging expected to accompany it have yet to gain momentum,
some parties and politicians have already fallen victim to elaborate
schemes designed to damage their reputation in the eyes of their
Internet-connected voters.
In the past month, the Communist Party and United Russia, the
two parties leading the polls, have seen unidentified pranksters
spam Runet users with letters blatantly demanding help in their
State Duma campaigns. The Yabloko party has had its web site brought
down by virus-generated spam.
United Russia was victimized when someone used a server located
in New York to send out some 100,000 copies of a letter on behalf
of the party. It gave the real postal address but fake e-mail
addresses of the party's Moscow branch.
The letter, which reached an e-mail account of The Moscow Times
three days ahead of United Russia's March 29 congress, "insistently
recommends" that company managers set up United Russia cells
and ensure that at least 5 percent of their employees join these
cells. Attached were application forms for those willing to join
the pro-Kremlin party.
United Russia swiftly denounced the letter as a prank designed
to tarnish its image, while the party's cyber wizards set out
to try to track down those behind it. They managed to identify
the New York server as the source of the spam, but not the culprits,
said Yevgeny Devin, spokesman for the party's Moscow branch.
In a phone interview Friday, Devin said he would rather not speculate
on who could have fired this salvo in what may become a full-fledged
cyber war.
United Russia's chief competitor -- the Communist Party -- did
not have to wait long for the second salvo to be fired.
Last Wednesday, someone flooded Runet e-mail addresses with a
letter said to be on behalf of the party that sternly demanded
help from journalists and PR specialists in the Communists' election
campaign.
Interestingly, the spam flooded Runet on the same day that Communist
Party chief Gennady Zyuganov was holding an online news conference
during which he stressed the importance of the Internet in the
election campaign. The party, whose base lies in poorer and older
segments of the population, has traditionally trailed liberal
parties in opinion polls taken among Runet users.
With state-controlled television giving little coverage to the
Communists, "we have to look for other methods," Zyuganov
said. "The main thing we need funding for is the Internet."
Unlike the United Russia prank letter, the April 16 spam gave
the Communist Party's real e-mail address and phone number. It
generated some 1,500 responses, with about half of them from people
offering assistance and the rest expressing outrage over such
a blunt demand for help, said Ilya Ponomaryov, who heads the party's
Information Technologies Center.
Ponomaryov said he and fellow party members have tried to answer
all respondents to tell them the April 16 letter was a prank but
also to reaffirm the party's need for help. "Why decline
help if it has already been offered?" he said.
Attempts to find the culprits have led the party to believe they
are "persons strongly resembling system administrators of
United Russia's Moscow branch," according to a statement
posted on the Communist Party's web site. Ponomaryov refused to
say why the party believes this.
Maxim Ivanov, a spokesman for United Russia's Moscow branch,
denied his party was involved.
Yabloko also has had trouble with spam. Letters were sent to
thousands of e-mail addresses March 26-31 with a politely worded
request for cooperation on behalf of Duma Deputy Sergei
Mitrokhin, a party member, and they gave Mitrokhin's official
Yabloko e-mail address as the return address.
The spam generated 36,000 responses to Mitrokhin's address and
crashed the server, which also hosts the party's web site, said
Mitrokhin's spokesman, Konstantin Dorokhin.
In addition to having to resurrect the web site, Yabloko computer
specialists also had to permanently shut down Mitrokhin's e-mail
address on April 7 to stop the flood of responses.
Yabloko said its computer specialists believe someone sent the
spam by infecting a number of servers in Britain, France, Brazil
and other countries. Mitrokin has asked the Federal Security Service
to try to find the culprits, Dorokhin said.
Yabloko's main liberal rival, the Union of Right Forces, has
not suffered from political spam, although someone tried to get
hold of the root password to the party's web site, which would
have made it possible to delete and add files at will, a party
web guru said Friday.
Whether or not those behind the spam cases are found, mudslinging
online and otherwise can be expected only to intensify ahead of
the December elections.
"The growth in this segment of spam is very rapid,"
said Igor Ashmanov of Ashmanov and Partners, which specializes
in anti-spam software. The company has registered only 10 cases
of political spam in Runet in the past half a year, but expects
to see as many as several cases of unsolicited political electronic
mailings per day this fall, he said by e-mail on Friday.
The other question is whether these compromising e-mails and
Internet postings will cause any lasting damage to the political
parties they target.
"As a propaganda method this will not be effective unless
picked up by television channels," Vladimir Pribylovsky of
the Panorama think tank said.
Denis Zenkin, a spokesman for anti-virus and anti-spam software
developer Kaspersky Labs, agreed. "Such spam has no future,"
he said. "The Russian Internet audience is not so politically
oriented to make such political spam technologies work.
"Moreover, since most Internet users are not interested
in it, such mailings will only irritate them and decrease the
popularity of political parties."
See also:
the original at
www.themoscowtimes.com
State Duma elections
2003
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