The research deals with questions of information warfare in virtual social environments of the Internet. In the work, statutory and legal documents of the Russian Federation in the domain of information protection are analyzed. Particularities of the Internet-based virtual social environments are discussed: the popularity of virtual social environments among users, the existence of users’ virtual identities, the network structure of information dissemination on the Internet, isotropy of virtual social environments, process capacities for manipulating users. The authors put forward the sociological substantiation for the mathematical model of information dissemination in virtual social environments having the network model of information dissemination; the conceptual description of the process is suggested. Although the state makes significant efforts at the legislative level for preventing the harmful information action on its citizens on the Internet, there is a number of particularities of virtual social environments which allow completing them only in part. The research findings can be of interest for specialists dealing with problems of information warfare and information security of virtual social environments.

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