A mail server vulnerability has publicly exposed more than a year’s worth of email logs, as well as highlighted security and infrastructure issues, faced by the administrators and maintainers of controversial websites such as 8kun. bellingcat.com/news/2021/01/0…
The logs, which were publicly visible before the vulnerability was patched last month, show thousands of email contacts made by 8kun administrators as well as by an address that appears to belong to 8kun owner Jim Watkins.
The logs show that, among other things, Watkins has been in regular contact with a number of QAnon enthusiasts as well as several influencers with large followings in the conspiracy movement.
While it is possible to see who is emailing who and when in the logs, it is not possible to view the contents of emails.
Although 8kun, which was previously known as 8chan, has long been known to host anonymous forums riddled with racist, neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic content, it has more recently become home to the baseless QAnon conspiracy that has spread across the US and beyond.
The vulnerable log directories were posted on the 420chan image board, as well as on Twitter, by Aubrey Cottle, the reported co-founder of Anonymous and 420chan. Cottle has declared war on QAnon, which he recently told Gizmodo was “warping minds around the world.”
Thanks again to everyone who has submitted visual materials from the Capitol attack! You can submit any photos/videos (if you've put the video on a Google Drive/Dropbox, that helps a lot!) here and we'll get to it. We have about 100 backlogged entries now. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…
Ashli Babbitt was shot and later died after she attempted to enter the Speaker's Lobby inside the Capitol on January 6.
We've retraced the shooting as well as Babbitt's ideological journey from Obama voter to MAGA and QAnon follower.bellingcat.com/uncategorized/…
Babbitt attended the Stop the Steal rally and heard President Trump speak. Afterwards, she joined thousands of people in marching to the Capitol, which she eventually entered.
Open source footage captured some of her movements inside the building prior to the shooting.
She was part of a group that eventually reached the Capitol's second floor. Footage from at least four different sources captured her in a mob that attempted to break through a door into the Speaker's Lounge, which leads into the Hall of the House of Representatives.
We have created a spreadsheet to compile as many photographs and videos from the Capitol storming. We've allowed anyone to add a Suggested addition to the spreadsheet, which we'll approve after spot-checks. Please add your finds to the spreadsheet here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
For now we are not trying to organize efforts to identify the individuals who stormed the Capitol, but rather compile copies of every video and photograph possible to enable future research. This is important to do quickly, as some platforms & users are removing these materials.
We encourage anyone with lots of Dropbox or Google Drive space to scrape linked videos and photographs and add links to (publicly accessible) copies of the scraped materials. We'll eventually try to consolidate them to a more stable location.
For those who are able to: please try to scrape and save any videos and livestreams of the Capitol storming and occupation. Just like after Charlottesville in 2017, many of those who are streaming will delete their streams once they realize how incriminating the footage is.
Check out our (clunky and incomplete) archiving effort from the Charlottesville event here for an idea of the type of materials to retain: bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
For most every platform, there are sites that can do a basic scrape of a video, including livestreams. Just Google "download [platform] video" and you'll find a site that can do it, though you may have to fight through a lot of ugly ads.
Use Google Drive/Dropbox to save them.
In August, @navalny was poisoned by an FSB team with Novichok. Last week, @navalny spoke to one of the FSB officers involved in the operation... for 48 minutes.
Full transcript (in Russian + English), analysis, and everything else you need to know: bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Navalny called Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a military chemist with the FSB who flew to Omsk after the poisoning attempt. He introduced himself as the fictional "Maxim Ustinov", an "aide to [Russian security council head] Patrushev", taking a report on the failed operation.
In order to get Kudryavtsev to pick up the phone, Navalny used a spoofing app that made his number appear to be that of an FSB landline that was frequently called throughout the operation by many members of the team.
A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of Alexey Navalny. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
The August 2020 poisoning in the Siberian city of Tomsk appears to have happened after years of surveillance, which began in 2017 shortly after Navalny first announced his intention to run for president of Russia.
Data shows that operatives from a clandestine FSB unit, specialized in working with poisonous substances, shadowed Navalny during his trips across Russia in 2017, 2019 and 2020, traveling alongside him on more than 30 overlapping flights to the same destinations.