In response to the violent censorship raging in Russia, Torrents of Truth devised a data-oriented solution to provide Russian citizens with unbiased news about the war in Ukraine. Indeed, it managed to circumvent the limitations imposed by state-controlled media and enabled Russians to access unfiltered, unbiased information by turning western blockbusters, series, softwares, and songs that were most searched and anticipated... into trojan horses for the truth.

For most Russians, the war in Ukraine is no more than a "special military operation".

At the start of the conflict, the Kremlin implemented draconian censorship laws that targeted any media operating outside its control. As a result, most independent journalists left the country, and a digital Iron Curtain was reinforced, blocking Russians from accessing unfiltered news and social media. Punishments for anyone challenging the Kremlin's disinformation narrative range from fines of $45,000 to up to 15 years in prison.

However, in early March, Russia lifted copyright laws in response to Western sanctions and essentially urged its citizens to download content from "enemy countries." This prompted us to wonder: Could this be an opportunity for freedom of speech to prevail? Could it provide a backdoor for Russians to access the truth that their government has silenced and forbidden?

As of March 7, 2022 the Russian government officially encouraged its citizens to pirate Western entertainment by decriminalizing intellectual property theft and lifting copyright laws, in a bid to counterattack the economic sanctions taken against the Federation following the invasion of Ukraine.

Using this as an opportunity to circumvent censorship in Russia, we launched Torrents of Truth: a data-coordinated cyber-offense that turned P2P platforms into a mass information channel, enabling journalists to disguise their unfiltered reports on the Ukraine war as pirated torrents of movies, series, music, softwares and books. All turned into trojan horses for the Truth.

We closely monitored trends in Russia from Kinopoisk.ru (the Russian IMDB) and Yandex.ru. By analyzing which western blockbusters, series, software, and music were most searched and anticipated at the launch of our cyberoffensive, we curated a selection of torrents that we knew would generate maximum downloads.

In total, 21 torrents were uploaded across popular torrent platforms. Russians who were attempting to pirate content such as The Batman, Doctor Strange or Adobe Photoshop 2022 were greeted with a message, saying (in Russian) “This isn’t what you expected to see. But this is something that you should see. The truth.”

Each torrent camouflaged the unfiltered report of a journalist who witnessed the truth of the devastating war in Ukraine. At the end of the report, viewers were invited to open the ReadMe.txt file attached to the file package, containing sources of information, verified links, and tools to seek the truth.

The Torrents of Truth were disseminated on June 7, 2022, and are still operational.

Not getting banned or noticed was a delicate operation: that’s why we created dozens of fake accounts on Russian pirate sites to manually endorse our trojan horses with comments and likes. We even created fake torrent trackers like http://trutracker.xyz/ or http://torrus.co/ in order to reference them on Yandex (the Russian Google).

But to make these torrents popular we needed higher numbers of seeders. So we set up a swarm of seedboxes: 6 untraceable high-bandwidth servers located all across Europe that simulated human downloads, bringing our torrents up in the rankings.

We also called the rest of the world to help to boost our numbers of seeders. That’s why we invited anyone, anywhere outside the Russian Federation to assist in spreading the truth in Russia by downloading the torrents from their own computer.

Torrents of Truth has enabled 4 journalists to speak up about the truth of the war in Ukraine—providing them with an undercover channel to keep spreading unbiased, trustworthy news, in a country where TV and newspapers aren’t allowing it anymore.

It’s hard to measure the total downloads of the torrents—since we sparked a cascading effect encouraging everyone to spread the content further and further way beyond our own seedboxes. But we identified that over 22 thousand downloads from our seedboxes were completed from Russian IP addresses.

That’s more than 22,500 Russian citizens who saw what was really happening in Ukraine for the first time. 22,500 possibilities for the truth to prevail and for people to change their opinion.

Despite the risks involved and all efforts made to silence them, the 4 journalists behind Torrents of Truth stood up against the Kremlin’s raging censorship.

State-controlled television is the main source of news for the majority of Russians, which portrays their country as a victim of the West, rather than the aggressor in Ukraine. Even online news consumers are unlikely to come across a different narrative. Independent media outlets have been facing increasing pressure, with their websites being blocked, content being labeled with a “foreign agent” disclaimer, and ultimately being taken off-air.

Aside from President Vladimir Putin interrupting regular programming in the early hours of February 24th to announce a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the picture has changed little since before the war. There is no ongoing live coverage, no acknowledgment that what’s happening is extraordinary, even as Russian bombs fall on Ukraine’s residential areas and the Russian economy enters a tailspin.