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WTF?! Have you been taking part in an online gaming community chat and noticed someone talking about Russia an unusual amount? According to Microsoft’s president, they could be Russian agents who are attempting to penetrate these groups in order to spread information. The warning comes just after classified US documents were leaked on a Minecraft Discord server.
Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit, Microsoft president Brad Smith said his company’s security analysis teams have identified efforts by Russian agents to share information within gaming communities.
“We’ve been advising governments about this,” Smith continued. “You know, it’s the Wagner Group, it is Russian intelligence, and they’re in part using this [gaming communities] to get information into circulation. That’s what happened here. It included the Discord channel around Minecraft, it included others of these [communities].”
The Wagner group is a private military organization run by an ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It works closely with the Russian government to the point that it is “considered a de facto unit of the Ministry of Defence or Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.”
Smith said it was important to stop these intrusions into gaming communities as they can spread propaganda and misinformation related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though he did admit that it wasn’t the most pressing issue when it comes to the war. “It’s not like playing Call of Duty is going to, like, lead to deaths in the real world; these are video games,” he said.
Microsoft President @BradSmi says the Wagner Group and Russian intelligence have been working to penetrate gaming communities to use them “as a place to get information into circulation.” pic.twitter.com/F7CCmaqOvu
– Semafor (@semafor) April 12, 2023
Smith’s statements came soon after news broke of a slew of US intelligence documents being shared on a Minecraft Discord server and ending up on Twitter, 4chan, and Telegram. They contained information on US support for Ukraine and the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa. There was also classified information on Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and South Korea. The Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Chris Meagher, said that some of the documents “appear to have been altered.”
FBI agents have since arrested 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Douglas Teixeira at a home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, over the unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. Teixeira held the highest level of security clearance granted by the federal government for top-secret information. The New York Times named Teixeira as the leader of a Discord group called “Thug Shaker Central,” which consisted of around 20 to 30 young men. He allegedly started sharing classified documents with the group in the last few months. The NYT reports that another member shared some of these on a public forum.
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