Martin Sona
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cargocultscientist.bsky.social
Martin Sona
@cargocultscientist.bsky.social
27 followers 170 following 9 posts
Social Cognitive Neuroscientist by training, data geek by default.
Volunteer Researcher, Global Authentication Project at Bellingcat & Toolkit Guardian (Social Media)

https://substack.com/@martinsona
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Reposted by Martin Sona
shashj.bsky.social
Fascinating. “The leaked Microsoft files suggest that a large proportion of [Unit 8200’s] sensitive data may now be sitting in [Microsoft] datacentres in the Netherlands and Ireland.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
www.theguardian.com
August 6, 2025 at 12:59 PM
cargocultscientist.bsky.social
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.
July 10, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Martin Sona
youranoncentral.bsky.social
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."
April 16, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Martin Sona
johannawild.bsky.social
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
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.
bellingcat.gitbook.io
March 13, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Martin Sona
tristanl.ee
Bellingcat's Auto Archiver is never gonna give you up
github.com/bellingcat/a...
March 1, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Martin Sona
nickwaters.bsky.social
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?
February 26, 2025 at 12:18 PM
cargocultscientist.bsky.social
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
February 23, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Martin Sona
sabinekamp.bsky.social
#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
February 23, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Reposted by Martin Sona
johannawild.bsky.social
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...
The Information Laundromat | bcattools
A tool for analyzing content replication and site architecture to detect information laundering.
bellingcat.gitbook.io
January 14, 2025 at 10:47 AM