Russian Search Engine Sets Trap for Pro-Kyiv Sympathizers

Fake websites of Russian anti-Putin units fighting for Ukraine have appeared on Russia’s biggest search engine to entrap sympathizers and potential recruits, according to an IT specialist.

Independent Russian news outlet The Insider reported on Thursday, Aug. 15, the discovery by a Russian opposition activist and IT specialist Artem Tamoian that the Russian Yandex search engine had begun displaying what looked like the official web pages of several units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR) and the “Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).”

The pages included sections where visitors could fill in their personal contact information, similar to that of their legitimate counterparts.

However, after careful inspection Tamoian realized that these were all very sophisticated fakes that very closely matched the appearance of the originals and differed from the real sites’ website addresses by only one or two letters. He referred to the fake website as an “FSB honeypot,” though without giving evidence that it had been produced by the FSB.

The fake pages prompt unsuspecting users to enter their personal information, which would likely be made available to the Russian intelligence services. 

For instance, the real website address for the LSR is: “legionliberty.army” while the fake is: “legionlibertys.army.” A spokesperson for the legion said this was definitely a phishing site designed to trick victims into divulging their personal data.

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The spokesperson said: “We have repeatedly warned like-minded people in publications about the threat of fake sites and Telegram channels. We will continue to do this in the future.”

Later, on Thursday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accredited domain name registrar “Namecheap” disabled the fake websites of the RDK and the LSR.

ICANN is a US-based nonprofit organization that coordinates the maintenance and procedures of namespace to ensure the stable and secure operation Internet globally.

Yandex is Russia’s biggest search engine which in 2021 was said to handle around 60 percent of all internet search traffic in the country and could handle an even higher proportion following limitations placed on Western search engines since the start of the war in Ukraine.