Spotlight

Research and Analysis

March 2024 7 min read

Advancing the narrative: analyzing the maturation of Palestinian militant videos

by Dr. Michael Loadenthal

Conflict Israel
Research and Analysis

February 2024 7 min read

Hacking with AI

by Maia Hamin, Stewart Scott

Artificial Intelligence Cybersecurity
Research and Analysis

February 2024 7 min read

TikTok: Hate the Game, Not the Player

by Rose Jackson, Seth Stodder, Kenton Thibaut

Americas China

Latest Research
July 2024

OT Cyber Policy: The Titanic or the Iceberg

by Danielle Jablanski

Current policy does not address the issue of cyber-physical security with a systemic approach, instead focusing with tunnel vision on specific events. This analysis uses the iceberg model for systems thinking to address policy gaps in the OT ecosystem, detailing recommendations for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
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July 2024

How Russian propagandists spun the Trump assassination attempt

by Emerson T. Brooking, Eto Buziashvili, Andy Carvin, Ruslan Trad

Conspiracy theories, alarmism, and early attempts to link the shooting with Ukraine
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Illustration of the earth in the form of a computer chip, generated using Adobe Firefly
July 2024

The sovereignty trap

by Konstantinos Komaitis, Esteban Ponce de León, Kenton Thibaut, Trisha Ray, Kevin Klyman

How the promise of sovereign AI obscures its pitfalls
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July 2024

Fake Cameroonian news sites spread pro-Russia, anti-France content

by Valentin Châtelet

Fake Cameroonian outlets disseminated AI-generated voiceovers across Facebook and other social media platforms
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July 2024

Anti-Ukraine narratives spread following Kyiv children’s hospital attack

by Ruslan Trad

Narratives blamed Ukraine for the incident, accusing it of targeting itself or deploying air defense systems ineptly
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July 2024

How Kenya’s tax bill protests spread online

by Digital Forensic Research Lab

After the bill’s withdrawal, online conversations continued to call for President Ruto’s resignation
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July 2024

AI tools usage for disinformation in the war in Ukraine

by Roman Osadchuk

How and what technology Russia used to spread disinformation after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine
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Screenshot of a Facebook ad displaying Ilan Shor's allegations that "the collective West aims to seize Moldova" and "the West means war and fear."
July 2024

Inauthentic Facebook ad campaign spreads anti-EU messages

by Victoria Olari

Facebook pages disguised as neutral news sources sponsored ads to promote anti-EU narratives ahead of Moldova’s referendum on EU integration
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July 2024

Spambots continue to suppress speech and enable harassment of the Chinese community on X

Networks of Chinese-language spambots risk the censoring of posts during politically sensitive events, repeating past oversights
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In-Depth Reports

February 2024

Hacking with AI

February 2024

TikTok: Hate the Game, Not the Player
June 2024

User in the Middle: An Interoperability and Security Guide for Policymakers

by Maia Hamin, Alphaeus Hanson

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.
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June 2024

“Reasonable” Cybersecurity in Forty-Seven Cases: The Federal Trade Commission’s Enforcement Actions Against Unfair and Deceptive Cyber Practices

by Isabella Wright, Maia Hamin

The FTC has brought 47 cases against companies for unfair or deceptive cybersecurity practices. What can we learn from them?
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Generative art showing paper airplanes flying over Red Square in Moscow.
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
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April 2024

Markets Matter: A Glance into the Spyware Industry

by Jen Roberts, Trey Herr, Emma Taylor, Nitansha Bansal

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.
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An image of a GPU overlaid with a computer terminal showing the results of an nmap command, a network scan.
February 2024

Hacking with AI

by Maia Hamin, Stewart Scott

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.
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Smartphone with the app from TikTok on the flags of the USA and China. (Source: Reuters)
February 2024

TikTok: Hate the Game, Not the Player

by Rose Jackson, Seth Stodder, Kenton Thibaut

How Strategic and Regulatory Confusion Around TikTok Prevent an Effective National Security Response
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January 2024

Design Questions in the Software Liability Debate

by Maia Hamin, Sara Ann Brackett, and Trey Herr, with Andy Kotz

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.
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November 2023

This Job Post Will Get You Kidnapped: A Deadly Cycle of Crime, Cyberscams, and Civil War in Myanmar

by Emily Ferguson and Emma Schroeder

In Myanmar, cybercrime has become an effective vehicle through which nonstate actors can fund and perpetuate conflict.
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Telephone with messaging apps. “Protecting point-to-point messaging apps: Understanding Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp in the United States” cover image.
August 2023

Protecting point-to-point messaging apps: Understanding Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp in the United States

by Iria Puyosa

A year-long project on protecting users’ data and privacy that analyzes the growing use of point-to-point messaging platforms in the United States and the implications their design and governing policies have for user privacy and free speech.
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Projects

Russian soldier and helicopter

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 2020 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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Issues

REGIONS

OT Cyber Policy: The Titanic or the Iceberg

July 2024 7 min read

OT Cyber Policy: The Titanic or the Iceberg

by Danielle Jablanski

Critical Infrastructure Policy Operational Technology
How Russian propagandists spun the Trump assassination attempt

July 2024 7 min read

How Russian propagandists spun the Trump assassination attempt

by Emerson T. Brooking, Eto Buziashvili, Andy Carvin, Ruslan Trad

The sovereignty trap

July 2024 7 min read

The sovereignty trap

by Konstantinos Komaitis, Esteban Ponce de León, Kenton Thibaut, Trisha Ray, Kevin Klyman

Artificial Intelligence Digital Policy
Fake Cameroonian news sites spread pro-Russia, anti-France content

July 2024 7 min read

Fake Cameroonian news sites spread pro-Russia, anti-France content

by Valentin Châtelet

Cameroon Disinformation
Anti-Ukraine narratives spread following Kyiv children’s hospital attack

July 2024 7 min read

Anti-Ukraine narratives spread following Kyiv children’s hospital attack

by Ruslan Trad

Disinformation Ukraine
How Kenya’s tax bill protests spread online

July 2024 7 min read

How Kenya’s tax bill protests spread online

by Digital Forensic Research Lab

Civil Society CrowdTangle
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