A little-known Russian IT company, Vulkan, develops software for surveillance, cyberattacks, running a troll factory and internet isolation on behalf of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB and the intelligence service foreigner, according to Important Stories from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. An anonymous source released the Vulkan documents to reporters.
According to Important Stories, the office of the Vulkan Scientific and Technical Center is located northeast of Moscow, the company employs just over 130 people. The company’s founders are Anton Markov and Alexander Irzhavsky. Vulkan’s total revenue for 2021 amounted to just over a billion rubles.
The publication names military units 33949 (SVR units) and 64829 (FSB Information Security Center) as the center’s main customers. According to journalists, over the past three years, both parties have transferred more than 300 million rubles to the company for the development of various programs.
However, the main development of the company, which journalists heard about, is the program under the code “Amezit”, which “Volcano” created by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
According to the documents, this program was supposed to monitor all Internet users in the specified territory, as well as block unwanted sites for them, from the department’s point of view, redirecting users to approved resources.
In addition, the program was supposed to improve the efficiency of the distribution of “special equipment”. This “Important Stories” subsystem has been described as “a control center for a huge troll factory”, using which an employee of the Ministry of Defense could “with one click” create hundreds of bots in various social networks.
Experts interviewed by reporters suggested that Amezit was created for use abroad, including in Ukraine. One of the main conditions for the operation of the complex was physical access to telecommunications equipment, notes Important Stories.
Journalists could not find information on where and how the part of Amezit, which is responsible for isolating the Internet, was used. However, they did find examples of how “special content promotion” worked. In particular, journalists have found information about Vulkan bots participating in the campaign against Hillary Clinton before the 2016 US presidential election and promoting a conspiracy theory. murders by the Ukrainian special services of his own colleague, Colonel Maxim Shapoval, in 2017.