This case study reexamines the release of the YouTube FSB arrest video of REvil ransomware actors as an official Russian gesture to the United States shortly before the start of the conflict with Ukraine. While this video is widely believed to be staged, when applying Signaling Theory and Warranting Theory as theoretical frameworks of communication and content analysis, the findings suggest that the arrests in the video may have in fact been genuine and, perhaps, the official Russian gesture authentic. As a case study limited sample comparison, FBI YouTube arrest and search videos appeared to be less authentic when applying the same theoretical frameworks. Considering how myth and folklore influence how we conceptualize and characterize threat actor content and communications, this case study suggests that Signaling Theory and Warranting Theory may provide a more grounded analytical framework for evaluating threat actor content and communications.
