Citizen Lab
Our investigations stand on Citizen Lab's reporting. This page collects every story of theirs we cite, every page on this site that uses it, and how we graded each claim built on it.
The reporting we cite
5 stories, each opening at its source.
- Citizen Lab — 'BlackCore's Influence Operations for Hire' (the firm's infrastructure, self-marketing, and services)
- The Citizen Lab — Hooking Candiru: Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus
- The Citizen Lab — Hooking Candiru (2021 shareholder structure; Optas Industry Ltd)
- The Citizen Lab — Exposing AdFection (the Al Jazeera compromise)
- The Citizen Lab — Exposing AdFection (Controlium: the one-stop platform to profile, deanonymize, and hack via ads)
Where their work appears on this site
How we graded the claims built on their work
7 FACT · 1 SOME SMOKE. A grade is our reading of the public record on one claim, not a verdict on the person.
- BlackCore: Influence Operations for Hire →
BlackCore is an Israeli firm that openly sold online deception at scale.
FACT - BlackCore: Influence Operations for Hire →
Citizen Lab reconstructed one BlackCore operation in detail: a 14-week 'training' for the Angolan government that ran a live influence campaign.
FACT - Devil's Tongue →
Devil's Tongue is real — Microsoft and Citizen Lab named it in 2021.
FACT - BlackCore: Influence Operations for Hire →
Meta took down an Israel-origin 'influence-for-hire' network spanning eight countries — including the NYC mayor's race.
FACT - The Advertising Weapon →
Qatari money inside the company whose spyware hit a Qatari network.
SOME SMOKE - The Advertising Weapon →
The customer, rebranded — and the vendor badge it kept for six years.
FACT - The Advertising Weapon →
The product had a name: Controlium.
FACT - BlackCore: Influence Operations for Hire →
The product is off-the-shelf, deniable election interference — an 'Architecture for State communications' any government can rent.
FACT