Jump to: Citizen Lab Reports External Publications Submissions Op-Eds, Letters, & Comments Books Guides Joint Reports OpenNet Initiative Citizen Lab Reports Rebekah Brown, Marcus Michaelsen, Matt Brooks, and Siena Anstis. “Weaponized Words: Uyghur Language Software Hijacked to Deliver Malware,” Citizen Lab Report No. 185, University of Toronto, April 28, 2025. Alberto Fittarelli, M. Scott,… Read more »
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.
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.
Reporting to the Director of Administration, Citizen Lab and working under the general direction of the Director, Citizen Lab in coordination with the University of Toronto’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), the Systems and Security Technical Lead is responsible for working with Information Technology staff and resources at Citizen Lab and the wider University to minimize risk of the compromising of information, data, servers, and server-based applications.
The Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) fosters research, outputs, and creative collaboration on repressive Internet censorship and surveillance issues. We welcome proposals from fellowship candidates for research projects related to our current thematic areas.
This profile is part of the Citizen Lab’s research on digital transnational repression. Digital transnational repression arises when governments use digital technologies to surveil, intimidate and silence exiled dissidents and diaspora communities. It is part of the broader practice of transnational repression, which refers to states using methods such as harassment, coercion-by-proxy, kidnapping, and assassination… Read more »
This profile is part of the Citizen Lab’s research on digital transnational repression. Digital transnational repression arises when governments use digital technologies to surveil, intimidate and silence exiled dissidents and diaspora communities. It is part of the broader practice of transnational repression, which refers to states using methods such as harassment, coercion-by-proxy, kidnapping, and assassination… Read more »
This report performs the first public analysis of MMTLS, the main network protocol used by WeChat, an app with over one billion users. The report finds that MMTLS is a modified version of TLS, however some of the modifications have introduced cryptographic weaknesses.
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).
The annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2024 is underway in Bristol, UK and online, a gathering of privacy experts from around the world to discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. On July 16, former Citizen Lab Open Technology Fund (OTF) Information Controls Fellowship Program fellow Benjamin Mixon-Baca will be… Read more »
