Recent Posts
Ron Deibert’s blog.
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✴︎ blogEndless Mayfly: an invasive species in the social media ecosystem
Bring up the topic of social media and state-sponsored disinformation, and most people think reflexively of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. As the Mueller report recently affirmed, Russian entities operated a sweeping and systematic social media “active measures” campaign designed to sow division and support Donald Trump leading up to the election. But…
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✴︎ blogCitizen Lab on 60 Minutes
Doing the “60 Minutes Stroll” with correspondent Lesley Stahl Last week, 60 Minutes broadcast an episode entitled “Pegasus” focusing on the controversies surrounding Israeli-based commercial spyware vendor, NSO Group. The episode profiled Citizen Lab’s work, and featured interviews with myself and my Citizen Lab colleague, Bill Marczak. My Citizen Lab colleagues and I published an…
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✴︎ blogAnother Journalist in Mexico a Target of NSO Group’s Spyware
Today, Citizen Lab is publishing a new report, entitled “Reckless VII: Wife of Journalist Slain in Cartel-Linked Killing Targeted with NSO Group Spyware.” This report continues our investigation of the abuse of commercial spyware manufactured by Israeli company NSO Group. Working with our partners in Mexico, we are now able to confirm that Griselda…
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✴︎ blogSubmission of the Citizen Lab to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
In 1993, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights established the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The current Special Rapporteur is Mr. David Kaye. Mr. Kaye recently issued a call for submissions on the topic of the surveillance industry and human…
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✴︎ blogSlain Mexican Journalist’s Colleagues Targeted With NSO Spyware
Photo Source: ContraLínea.com.mx Javier Valdez Cárdenas was an award-winning Mexican investigative journalist known for his reporting on drug trafficking and organized crime. As with dozens of other investigative journalists in Mexico, Cárdenas’ brave reporting ended up having lethal consequences. On May 15, 2017 around noon, Cárdenas was forcibly removed from his vehicle and gunned down…
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✴︎ blogSaudi-linked Cyber Espionage Against Canadian Victim Discovered
Figure 1: The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia to Canada (September 2018; Credit: Ron Deibert) Today, the Citizen Lab is publishing a major new report, “The Kingdom Came to Canada: How Saudi-Linked Digital Espionage Reached Canadian Soil,” by Bill Marczak, John Scott-Railton, Adam Senft, Bahr Abdul Razzak, and myself. Our report details how we discovered…
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✴︎ blogWatching NSO Group
I am pleased to announce a new Citizen Lab report, authored by Bill Marczak, John Scott-Railton, Sarah McKune, Bahr Abdul Razzak, and myself, entitled “Hide and Seek: Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries.” This report is the latest in a major research area for the Citizen Lab: the proliferation and abuse…
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✴︎ blogDigital Security for Whom or What?
With data surrounding us and networked into everything we do, the security of our data, both in transit and while at rest, is an obvious public safety issue. Which makes it puzzling why governments — whose principal job, since at least the time of Thomas Hobbes, is to keep us safe — have repeatedly sought…
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✴︎ blogSweeping the Internet for Netsweeper
The LGBTQ news website, “Gay Today,” is blocked in Bahrain; the website for Greenpeace International is blocked in the UAE; a matrimonial dating website is censored in Afghanistan; all of the World Health Organization’s website, including sub-pages about HIV/AIDS information, is blocked in Kuwait; an entire category of websites labeled “Sex Education,” are all censored…
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✴︎ blogIntroducing QUANTUM-as-a-Service
Imagine that your device could be silently commandeered and used to spy on you simply because you surfed the web. No need for anyone to have possession of it and physically install something. No need to trick you into downloading spyware, clicking on a malicious link, or entering your credentials into a phony login page.…