Alberto Fittarelli is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab specializing in disinformation research. He has over 15 years of experience investigating digital threats in the private sector, working at leading tech firms including Meta, PayPal, and Uber. He uses open source intelligence (OSINT) to discover, analyze, and attribute online influence operations, with a focus on protecting civil society. He trains organizations, investigative reporters, and analysts on how to do the same. His first non-fiction book, Il Legionario, digs into a historical investigation on a shady and pivotal figure in Cold War Italy to demonstrate how OSINT techniques can be used to investigate events that occurred decades ago.
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Publications
We Say You Want a Revolution
PRISONBREAK – An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime
The control and strategic manipulation of information has long played a role in the geopolitical and ideological competition between the Islamic Republic of Iran and its political adversaries, including Israel. Prior Citizen Lab research has uncovered Iranian disinformation efforts, however, in this investigation we focus on the “other side” of the geopolitical competition. We analyzed an influence operation we assess as most likely undertaken by an entity of the Israeli government or a private subcontractor working closely with it.
JUICYJAM
How Thai Authorities Use Online Doxxing to Suppress Dissent
A sustained, coordinated social media harassment and doxxing campaign – which we codenamed JUICYJAM – targeting the pro-democracy movement in Thailand has run uninterrupted, and unchallenged, since at least August 2020. Through our analysis of public social media posts we determined that the campaign was not only inauthentic, but the information revealed could not have been reasonably sourced from a private individual.
PAPERWALL
Chinese Websites Posing as Local News Outlets Target Global Audiences with Pro-Beijing Content
A network of at least 123 websites operated from within the People’s Republic of China while posing as local news outlets in 30 countries across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, disseminates pro-Beijing disinformation and ad hominem attacks within much larger volumes of commercial press releases. We name this campaign PAPERWALL. We attribute the PAPERWALL campaign to Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co., Ltd., aka Haimai, a PR firm in China based on digital infrastructure linkages between the firm’s official website and the network. These findings confirm the increasingly important role private firms play in the realm of digital influence operations and the propensity of the Chinese government to make use of them.
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