The German concern Siemens has launched an internal investigation against employees who previously worked for the Russian company Vulkan, which developed a tool for managing a “troll factory”, identifying and blocking articles on the Internet for the Russian Defense Ministry. Der Spiegel writes about it.
The basis for the start of the audit, as the publication clarifies, was a joint investigation of the media from eight countries, including the ZDF television channel, as well as the Guardian, Washington Post and the Russian edition of Important Stories.
Investigators found out that the Vulkan company, which, in addition to the Russian Ministry of Defense, cooperates with the FSB and the Foreign Intelligence Service, has developed software for identifying objectionable articles on the Internet, blocking them, spoofing traffic and managing bots.
In my country blocked
present tense
The Vulcan documents obtained by the journalists contain plans for large-scale projects, software descriptions, instructions, internal emails, and information about bank transfers.
Most of the data came from an anonymous source immediately after the start of a full-scale Russian war in Ukraine, first to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The source later sent them to Der Spiegel as well. The documents were allegedly obtained from the Russian law enforcement agencies. Many Western intelligence agencies have confirmed their authenticity.
Among other things, the files contain information about 90 former Vulcan programmers who work for Western concerns. One of the former employees of the Russian company is said to work for Siemens in Munich.
In a commentary to Der Spiegel, a Siemens spokesman said the company is “taking this case seriously and is investigating it.” However, for reasons of personal data protection, the concern refused to provide information about the identity of the employee.
Investigators found out that former Vulcan employees also work for Booking and Trivago. One of them even holds the position of a senior software engineer in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) enterprise. At the request of Spiegel, a representative of the concern only said that the safety of its customers has the highest priority. Booking and Trivago did not respond to the publication’s request.
