iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Martin Sona

Fil Menczer @fil.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Great report by @eileenguo.bsky.social @giselilla.bsky.social @cargocultscientist.bsky.social. The CIC conspiracy roots go even further back. In 2014, our research on disinformation spread on social media was falsely accused of being a secret censorship operation www.science.org/content/arti...

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Martin Sona @cargocultscientist.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The most damaging conspiracy theory you haven't heard of: How did the 'censorship industry' narrative make it from the fringes of the alt-right to the stage of transatlantic politics?

typeinvestigations.org

How ideas of a vast censorship network moved from the online fringe to Trump policy - Type Investigations

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Reposted by Martin Sona

afko.bsky.social @afko.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Fab 🎉 insight by fellow toolkit "guardian", Martin @cargocultscientist.bsky.social who is in charge of the Social Media category.

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Martin Sona @cargocultscientist.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

@hongpong.bsky.social discordleaks.unicornriot.ninja seems to be unavailable. Do you know if that's a temporary outage or has the page been moved?

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Martin Sona @cargocultscientist.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

EU legislation moves slowly like a heavy ship - that’s reassuring. US-based Christian nationalists and far-right operatives are unlikely to derail the Digital Services Act now. Yet we’ve left safe harbors for open waters; vigilance remains vital. Icebergs are easiest to avoid when spotted early.

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Reposted by Martin Sona

Anonymous @youranoncentral.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Musk’s DOGE involved in what appears to be a foreign espionage operation and data theft. They also have death threatened US federal whistleblowers and disabled security systems, deliberately allowing Russian IPs to access sensitive US federal government systems. www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...

A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

The IT team met to discuss insider threats - namely, the DOGE engineers, whose activities it had little insight into or control over. "We had no idea what they did," he explained. Those conversations are reflected in his official disclosure.
They eventually launched a formal breach investigation, according to the disclosure, and prepared a request for assistance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). However, those efforts were disrupted without an explanation, Berulis said. That was deeply troubling to Berulis, who felt he needed help to try to get to the bottom of what happened and determine what new vulnerabilities might be exploited as a result.
In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISAs help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.

While investigating the data taken from the agency, Berulis tried to determine its ultimate destination. But whoever had exfiltrated it had disguised its destination too, according to the disclosure.
DOGE staffers had permission to access the system, but removing data is another matter.
Berulis says someone appeared to be doing something called DNS tunneling to prevent the data exfiltration from being detected. He came to that conclusion, outlined in his disclosure, after he saw a traffic spike in DNS requests parallel to the data being exfiltrated, a spike 1,000 times the normal number of requests.
When someone uses this kind of technique, they set up a domain name that pings the target system with questions or queries. But they configure the compromised server so that it answers those DNS queries by sending out packets of data, allowing the attacker to steal information that has been broken down into smaller chunks.
"We've seen Russian threat actors do things like this on
U.S. government systems," said one threat intelligence researcher who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly by their employer.
That analyst, who has extensive experience hunting nation-state-sponsored hackers, reviewed the whistleblower's technical claims.

Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in, according to Berulis' disclosure. The attempts were "near real-time," according to the disclosure. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming. Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created DOGE accounts - and the person had the correct username and password, according to Berulis. While it's possible the user was disguising their location, it's highly unlikely they'd appear to be coming from Russia if they wanted to avoid suspicion, cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR explained.
On their own, a few failed login attempts from a Russian IP address aren't a smoking gun, those cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR said. But given the overall picture of activity, it's a concerning sign that foreign adversaries may already be searching for ways into government systems that DOGE engineers may have left exposed.
"When you move fast and break stuff, the opportunity to ride the coattails of authorized access is ridiculously easy to achieve," said Handorf. What he means is that if DOGE engineers left access points to the network open, it would be very easy for spies or criminals to break in and steal data behind DOGE.
He said he could also see foreign adversaries trying to recruit or pay DOGE team members for access to sensitive data. "It would not surprise me if DOGE is accidentally compromised."

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Reposted by Martin Sona

Johanna Wild @johannawild.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

The Meta Content Library allows approved researchers to analyse public Facebook and Instagram posts. Open source researchers who are working for universities and nonprofits might be eligible to apply for access. bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit/more... by @cargocultscientist.bsky.social

bellingcat.gitbook.io

Meta Content Library | Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit

Meta Content Library provides approved researchers with access to public Facebook, Instagram, and Threads content with search, filtering, and engagement metrics.

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Reposted by Martin Sona

Nick Waters @nickwaters.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Can anyone recommend any articles or books which go into the tactical deployments of Russian forces during the first year or so of the full scale invasion of Ukraine?

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Martin Sona @cargocultscientist.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Correctiv reported 200 videos spreading false claims about the German federal election, yet almost half remain online. These videos reached millions of views with little action from TikTok. The platform may be violating EU regulations. More: correctiv.org #Disinformation #GermanyElection2025

correctiv.org

CORRECTIV | Recherchen für die Gesellschaft

CORRECTIV ist eine gemeinnützige & unabhängige Redaktion. Wir stehen für investigativen Journalismus & stärken eine demokratische Gesellschaft

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Reposted by Martin Sona

Sabine🎗️ @sabinekamp.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

#OnThisDay 1899 wurde Erich Kästner geboren „Man darf nicht warten, bis aus dem Schneeball eine Lawine geworden ist. Man muss den rollenden Schneeball zertreten. Die Lawine hält keiner mehr auf. Sie ruht erst, wenn sie alles unter sich begraben hat. Das ist die Lehre, das ist das Fazit

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Reposted by Martin Sona

Johanna Wild @johannawild.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Use The Information Laundromat to find out whether the same content has been published on several websites. It can also detect infrastructure-level connections between domains. Learn more in our new toolkit description by @cargocultscientist.bsky.social : bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit/more...

bellingcat.gitbook.io

The Information Laundromat | bcattools

A tool for analyzing content replication and site architecture to detect information laundering.

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