Russian hackers fuelled Princess of Wales conspiracy theories, says security expert

A Russian “hacking” group named Doppelgänger fuelled conspiracy theories about the Princess of Wales, an online security expert said.

The group, which was first detected spreading misinformation in May 2022, is run by a commercial organisation out of Russia to sow distrust in public institutions, including the British monarchy.

Martin Innes, a professor from the Security, Crime, and Intelligence Innovation Institute at Cardiff University, said: “They will try to leap on and hijack any major story that they think that they can manipulate to further Russia’s aims, so denigrating Ukraine and trying to undermine the war effort.”

He explained that the group used the virulent nature of the conspiracies that circulated about the Princess’s health and whereabouts before she announced her cancer diagnosis to further these aims.

“It’s very often they’re not making original posts, but they’re replying to posts that other people have made,” he said.

“Obviously they did engage with some of the conspiracies, because they have to build an audience and try and get followers … but the real purpose was to jump on the trending hashtags and use those to push the messages that they wanted.”

More recently, they were also found to be instrumental in the spread of misinformation about the video in which the Princess announced she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy.

The original video, posted to X, has been viewed more than 106 million times, and on TikTok there have been more than 14 billion views on videos about the Princess in just a month.

Prof Innes said that his disinformation research programme, which has been running since 2018, initially spotted Doppelgänger’s involvement over the issue by seeing a number of “suspicious spikes” online in comments talking about Ukraine and Russia under videos or posts about the Princess.

It was discovered that in a single day, 45 different accounts were found to be pushing and repurposing various theories related to the Princess, enough for them to link back to Doppelgänger.

Whitehall sources expressed concern last month that Russia as well as China and Iran are fuelling disinformation about the Princess to destabilise the nation.

Senior government figures said they feared that hostile states are behind the spread of wild conspiracy theories, and online rumours surrounding her health.

Describing the Russian disinformation-propagating group as similar to a “dark PR agency”, Prof Innes said the group first came to notice by spoofing media websites such as The Guardian and The New York Times.

He said these “imitation” websites looked very similar to the original, even using the same content, but that they would tweak it to their “geopolitical ends”.

‘Decay public trust’

It is thought that Doppelgänger could have a significant influence on upcoming political elections both at home and abroad, and the organisation has previously been called the “largest” and “most aggressively persistent” group online.

“Basically, the aim is to decay public trust in institutions, whether that be democracy and elections, whether that be government, all sorts of kinds of institutions,” Prof Innes said.

“And of course monarchy in the UK is an important institution, so it’s about trying to just degrade public trust over time, and also to decrease the ability of people to know what to trust online.”