Siena Anstis is a senior legal advisor at the Citizen Lab. She is a lawyer admitted to practice in Ontario and New York and a researcher in the areas of international law, human rights, technology, and migration.
She has worked as a refugee lawyer in Canada, a litigation associate at Morrison Foerster LLP in New York City, and as a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada (2015-2016) and the Court of Appeal for Ontario (2014-2015). She holds a Master of Law from the University of Cambridge (2020), a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University (2014), and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and anthropology from Concordia University (2009). She is currently completing a PhD in Law at the University of Oslo.
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Publications
Exposing AdFection Executive Summary
This is an executive summary for our report “Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware.”
Exposing AdFection
How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware
This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and hack devices around the world.
Security Without Safety
Queering Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transnational Repression
Citizen Lab researchers Noura Aljizawi, Shaila Baran, Marcus Michaelsen, and Siena Anstis published a paper titled “Security Without Safety: Queering Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transnational Repression” in the special issue on “Digital Intersectionality and Marginalization in the Majority World” of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety.