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Apparently, Unit 74455 is linked to operations of disinformation, influence, propaganda … which would reconfirm the broad concept of information warfare of the Russian military doctrine. We have already referred to it repeatedly, and to the mixture of the purely technical field with the psychological field (dezinformatsiya, spetspropaganda, kompromat, etc.).

In fact, the US DIA speaks of the confrontation of Russian information (informatsionnoye protivoborstvo, IPb) as the term used by the Government for the information war conflict, with two major measures: technical, as a classic CNO, and psychological, as the attempt to manipulate the population in favour of Russian interests ([1]), speaking openly of “cyber” PSYOP. The first of these measures would correspond to Unit 26165 and the second to Unit 74455.

There is very little information available in open sources in relation to Unit 74455; its relationship with the technological field can be confirmed with some scientific references (articles and books). For example, in the journal “Information Control and Measurement Systems”, the name of E.E. Nazarov appears, as a scientist and employee of the Military Unit 74455. This identity participated in two articles: “Algorithm to generate type interference based on the rapid evaluation of signal parameters” and “Methods to estimate the errors in the determination of the coordinates of the airborne radar carrier by a spatially distributed RTR system“. Although both titles were translated from Russian using automatic translation systems (thank you, Google) and may not be entirely correct, we can guess that people from this Unit work on topics such as jamming (and anti-jamming) signals; in other words, electronic warfare.

Reference to this Unit is also made, in particular to Mikhail Alekseevich Eremeev as Unit Director and Doctor of Technical Sciences, co-author of several books and scientific articles on cryptography; without knowing whether or not the names and surnames are common, someone with this same identification is also -or has been- a professor in the Department of Special Instruments Technologies of the Moscow Technological University and a member of the Editorial Board of the publication “Proceedings of the A.F. Mozhaisky Military Space Academy “.

The unit is located, as we said before and according to Mueller’s accusation, at number 22 Kirova Street, in the Khimki district, Moscow. It’s based in the building known as “The Tower”, although in some reference – very possibly for administrative purposes, the address of the GRU (the famous “Aquarium”) is quoted directly at 76 Khoroshevskoe. Mueller identifies only three members of the Unit, according to the following organization chart:

Unit 74455 used the information stolen by Unit 26165 for the benefit of Russian interests, according to Mueller’s accusation. In other words, it is in charge of “cyber” psychological operations. According to the nomenclature of the DIA cited above: it handles the information that Unit 26165 steals from its objectives, for which it establishes and maintains a technological infrastructure (profiles in social networks, websites …) with which to exploit this information. For example, this Unit is responsible for the handling of Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks sockpuppets using false identities, anonymized connections, start-up and operation of websites, etc.

References

[1] DIA. Russia Military Power. Building a Military to Support Great Power Aspirations. 2017.