Spotlight
Latest Research
March 2025
How Azerbaijani media and politicians endorse Georgia’s shift away from the West
Politicians and pro-government media in Azerbaijan packages Georgia’s anti-Western rhetoric and political shift for a domestic audience, reinforcing the narrative of Western decline.
March 2025
Cross-platform campaign sows anti-Europe division in Moldova
Campaign utilized a primary Telegram channel and thousands of Facebook accounts to post comments critical of Moldova’s pro-European stance
March 2025
Japan’s technology paradox: the challenge of Chinese disinformation
Japan serves as an important case study to illustrate an unappreciated aspect of fostering information resilience against malign influence
March 2025
An existential threat: Disinformation ‘single biggest risk’ to Canadian democracy
The DFRLab reviews Canada’s 2025 Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference
March 2025
Connecting the other half of humanity is the deal of the century
China is investing billions in global internet infrastructure through its Digital Silk Road Initiative, advancing its interests over the US
March 2025
Cross-platform multilingual campaign amplifies biolabs conspiracy targeting US and Armenia
Campaign exploits long-running false and misleading claims purporting US bioweapons-related activity in Europe and elsewhere
March 2025
Russia-linked Pravda network cited on Wikipedia, LLMs, and X
Pravda network content pollutes sources on multiple platforms, sparking worries of false claims and sanctioned content reaching global audiences
March 2025
Telegram network seeks to manipulate Moldova’s local political discourse
Network of automated Telegram channels using coordinated disinformation tactics appears to be Russian in origin
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
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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