. >> reporter: he's a >> reporter: ben nimmo is a cyber investigator for the d.c.- based atlantic council. >> who here has been insulted by the russian measu >> reporter: with the u.s. mid- terms approaching, he's teaching these activists and social media experts how to detect and disable russian disinformation online. >> we know that elections are always a big, juicy target. >> reporter: the aim is to head off the kind of russian meddling that tainted america's 2016 presidential campaign. but with the midterm primaries already under way, nimmo agrees with u.s. intelligence. russian trolls and bots-- those are automated fake accounts-- are preparing a flood of toxic and divisive disinformation aimed squarely at u.s. voters. >> you'll see lots of push on gun control, on immigration and that whole southern border now, race relations. >> reporter: all the hot issues. >> and supreme court now expect to see attacks. >> reporter: we agreed not to reveal where he lives reveal where ben nimmo lives and works because exposing russian hackers and trolls is dangerous business, and he's received deat

ben nimmo is a seniorfellow at the atlantic council, an american think tank that focuses on internationalt on bots. we asked him to scrutinise a list of pro and anti-qatar hash tags to decide which were genuinely popular and which were being pushed by bots. the first hash tag i looked that is one called qatarisnotalone, which is obviously a pro-qatari hash tag. when i look for the bot involvement, what i found was that that first spike that we saw, it was all re—tweets of a single tweet from this account called hassanbink703. the spike in popularity was caused by accounts all with suspiciously similar names, retweeting the message the second it was posted. when a number of bot accounts work together like this, it's called a botnet. this is a very simple botnet, none of these has a human being behind it, these have all been preprogrammed to share content. this is a botnet which is helping to drive traffic on that hash tag, so you're getting 100 tweets in the space of a couple of seconds. that's a high volume and what it's doing is make the hash tag look more visible and make it look more p

. >> reporter: ben nimmo is a cyber investigator for the d.c.-based investment council.ith the u.s. midterms approaching, he's teaching these activists and social media experts how to detect and expose russian disinformation online. >> we know elections are always a big juicy target. >> reporter: the aim is to head off the kind of russian meddling that tainted america's 2016 presidential campaign, but with the mid under way, nimmo agrees with u.s. ill intelligence that russian trolls and bots -- those are automated fake accounts -- are preparing a flock of toxic and divisive disinformation aimed squarely at u.s. voters. >> you'll see lots of push on gun control, on immigration, race relations. >> all the hot issues. >> hot issues. supreme court will, i expect, to see attacks. >> reporter: all it will take is a single call from the kremlin to sic it on the election. >> could the trump/putin summit turn out so well, so cordial, that they won't interfere in the midterms? >> no. i think solving the disinformation issue is zero. >> elizabeth palmer, cbs news, london. >>> well