Spotlight
Latest Research
February 2025
Cross-platform, multilingual Russian operations promote pro-Kremlin content
The Russian influence operations Doppelganger and Operation Undercut utilized several tactics to spread content on X, TikTok, 9gag, and Americas Best Pics and Videos
February 2025
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and cycles of nuclear hysteria
Official channels, pro-Russian bloggers, and networks of inauthentic social media accounts claim that Ukraine is preparing to attack nuclear power facilities
February 2025
Scammers impersonated Navalny team, news outlets to promote fake stories and lure victims
Scammers activated dormant pages to defraud a Russian-speaking audience following Alexei Navalny’s death in February 2024
February 2025
Ukrainian biolabs: the never-ending narrative
The narrative about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine has been a regular weapon in the propagandist arsenal for over a decade. Now, it is seeking new avenues for growth
February 2025
Russia’s so-called “Pravda” network expands worldwide
The network formerly known as Portal Kombat added new domains and expanded its geographic reach over the last year
February 2025
What the TikTok ban and Xiaohongshu’s brief popularity reveal about US-China relations and their tech sectors
Influx of US users to RedNote amid TikTok ban limbo presents propaganda opportunities and censorship challenges for China
February 2025
The Musk Effect: Assessing X’s impact on Germany’s election discourse
Weidel-Musk interactions drove a significant portion of AfD’s X engagement, with data showing a high volume of English-language accounts contributing to the party’s increased reach on the platform
February 2025
Domestic and international campaigns targeted PACE during Azerbaijan’s 2024 suspension
During the suspension of the Azerbaijan delegation, anti-PACE narratives spread both domestically and internationally
February 2025
Analysis: At the AI Action Summit, bragging rights for hosts but limited opportunities for stakeholders
Hosting an international tech summit brings great prestige, but direct engagement with stakeholders would have been more constructive
In-Depth Reports
September 2024
Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them: Mapping the Global Spyware Market and its Threats to National Security and Human Rights
The Mythical Beasts project pulls back the curtain on the connections between 435 entities across forty-two countries in the global spyware market.
September 2024
Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them
Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them: Mapping the Global Spyware Market and its Threats to National Security and Human Rights is concerned with the commercial market for spyware and provides data on market participants.
June 2024
User in the Middle: An Interoperability and Security Guide for Policymakers
When technologies work together, it benefits users and the digital ecosystem. Policymakers can advance interoperability and security in tandem by understanding how each impacts the other.
June 2024
“Reasonable” Cybersecurity in Forty-Seven Cases: The Federal Trade Commission’s Enforcement Actions Against Unfair and Deceptive Cyber Practices
The FTC has brought 47 cases against companies for unfair or deceptive cybersecurity practices. What can we learn from them?
June 2024
Another battlefield: Telegram as a digital front in Russia’s war against Ukraine
In this new report, the DFRLab investigates the role of Telegram in Russia since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine
April 2024
Markets Matter: A Glance into the Spyware Industry
The Intellexa Consortium is a complex web of holding companies and vendors for spyware and related services. The Consortium represents a compelling example of spyware vendors in the context of the market in which they operate—one which helps facilitate the commercial sale of software driving both human rights and national security risk.
February 2024
Hacking with AI
Can generative AI help hackers?
By deconstructing the question into attack phases and actor profiles, this report analyzes the risks, the realities, and their implications for policy.
February 2024
TikTok: Hate the Game, Not the Player
How Strategic and Regulatory Confusion Around TikTok Prevent an Effective National Security Response
January 2024
Design Questions in the Software Liability Debate
Software liability—resurgent in the policy debate since its mention in the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy—describes varied potential structures to create legal accountability for vendors of insecure software. This report identifies key design questions for such regimes and tracks their discussion through the decades-long history of the debate.
Projects
Russian War Report
As Russia’s aggression in Europe heats up, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) is keeping a close eye on Moscow’s movements across the military, cyber, and information domains.
Foreign Interference Attribution Tracker
The DFRLab’s Foreign Interference Attribution Tracker (FIAT) is an interactive, open-source database that captures allegations of foreign interference relevant to the 2024 election. This tool assesses the credibility, bias, evidence, transparency, and impact of each claim.
Election Official Handbook: Preparing for Election Day Misinformation
As part of the Election Integrity Partnership, the DFRLab has analyzed roughly four hundred cases of election-related dis- and misinformation on social media. This memo gathers the findings and issues recommendations for US election officials: they must prepare for viral falsehoods online that persist for weeks.
Dichotomies of Disinformation
Via the DFRLab’s Github: This project isolates “political disinformation campaigns.” Dichotomies of Disinformation proposes and tests a classification system built on 150 variable options. Our intent is to establish a replicable, extensible system by which widely disparate disinformation campaigns can be categorized and compared.
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