The Citizen Lab will be hosting two sessions, “Asia Chats” and “Filtering Free Expression,” at the RightsCon 2015 conference in Manila, Philippines.

An article by Forbes magazine discusses FireEye’s recent report on Syria, authored by Daniel Regalado, Citizen Lab Technical Advisory Board member Nart Villeneuve, and Citizen Lab Research Fellow John Scott Railton.

March 9 – Toronto

In response to the call for submissions of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression regarding the use of encryption and anonymity in digital communications, the Citizen Lab and independent researcher Collin Anderson have submitted a joint analysis, entitled “The need for democratization of digital security solutions to ensure the right to freedom of expression.”

Citizen Lab Senior Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire was featured on Wired Italy’s Top 50 People of the Year 2014. The list featured a mix of individuals such as hackers, CEOs, leading biological, politicians, and civil rights activists.

In an article published on Slate, entitled “Code Is Law,” Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jon Penney discussed how US laws, such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), are determining the ethics of computer code.

The Canadian SIGINT Summaries includes downloadable copies, along with summary, publication, and original source information, of leaked CSE documents.

This report describes a malware attack on a Syrian citizen media group critical of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Though we are unable to conclusively attribute the attack to ISIS or its supporters, a link to ISIS is plausible. The malware used in the attack differs substantially from campaigns linked to the Syrian regime, and the attack is against a group that is an active target of ISIS forces. In the interest of highlighting a developing threat, this post analyzes the attack and provides a list of Indicators of Compromise.

Independent Researcher Claudio Guarnieri has partnered with Privacy International, Digitale Gesellschaft, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Amnesty International to publicly release the Detekt tool, which allows journalists and human rights defenders to scan their computers for traces of known surveillance spyware.