Publications

In May 2025, Keir Giles, a well-known expert on Russian military operations, was targeted with a highly sophisticated and personalized phishing attack. Using a method not previously observed by the Citizen Lab, the attacker posed as a U.S. State Department employee to convince Mr. Giles to create and send app-specific passwords for his email accounts, bypassing multi-factor authentication. Google spotted and blocked the attack, attributing it to a Russian state-backed operator.

Our investigation of a spearphishing campaign that targeted senior members of the World Uyghur Congress in March 2025 reveals a highly-customized attack delivery method. The ruse used by attackers replicates a pattern in which threat actors weaponize software and websites aimed at preserving and supporting marginalized and repressed cultures to target those same communities.

In our first investigation into Israel-based spyware company, Paragon Solutions, we begin to untangle multiple threads connected to the proliferation of Paragon’s mercenary spyware operations across the globe. This report includes an infrastructure analysis of Paragon’s spyware product, called Graphite; a forensic analysis of infected devices belonging to members of civil society; and a closer look at the use of Paragon spyware in both Canada and Italy.

Our analysis of spyware covertly implanted on a phone returned to a Russian programmer after he was released from custody, finds that the spyware placed on his device allows the operator to track a target device’s location, record phone calls, keystrokes, and read messages from encrypted messaging apps, among other capabilities.

A sophisticated spear phishing campaign has been targeting Western and Russian civil society. In collaboration with Access Now, and with the participation of numerous civil society organizations, we uncover this operation and link it to COLDRIVER, a group attributed by multiple governments to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).