Aric Toler, bellingcat

Aric Toler

bellingcat

Charlotte, NC, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • bellingcat
  • MediaShift
  • GIJN
  • Global Voices

Past articles by Aric:

Russia’s “Anti-Selfie Soldier Law”: Greatest Hits and Implications

After months sitting in the Russian State Duma, a law will finally pass forbidding Russian servicemen from carrying or using internet-connected devices to share information about their military units and service. The law introduces additional restrictions on Russian servicemen from sharing information about the military, including speaking with journalists about their military service or… → Read More

Using the New Russian Facial Recognition Site SearchFace.ru

In September 2018, the Russian website FindFace was taken offline in order to provide “solutions tailored for government and business”. This site received international press for its accuracy in its facial recognition capabilities, with a focus on finding someone’s profile on the Russian social network Vkontakte (VK). Recently, a new site has emerged from the... → Read More

Open Source Monitoring of NATO Trident Juncture Exercises

Russia’s massive annual military exercises, which are named after cardinal directions (e.g. Vostok for east, Zapad for west), garner a tremendous amount of international attention and intense scrutiny. While in some rare circumstances Russian military exercises parlayed into larger international conflicts, such as the July 2008 Kavkaz military exercises that were followed the following month... → Read More

The Unintelligent Design of SureFire Intelligence

On October 30th, the far-right site Gateway Pundit published documents alleging that Robert Mueller, who is heading up the investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, sexually assaulted a woman in 2010. The firm that produced this “investigation” was quickly revealed to be SureFire Intelligence, which has a tiny digital footprint prior... → Read More

Creating an Android Open Source Research Device on Your PC

Most digital research can be done without any issues on a desktop or laptop computer; however, sometimes you may need to use a mobile device to use particular applications. This guide will provide a walk-through on setting up a virtual Android device on a PC to conduct open source research. Android emulation is also possible... → Read More

Addressing the Aeroflot MH17 Conspiracy Theory

On 8 August 2014, the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) held a press conference at the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre in central Kyiv describing how they believed that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was not the true target of the missile launch that killed 298 people on 17 July 2014, but instead Aeroflot Flight 2074... → Read More

Anatomy of a Russian ‘Troll Factory’ News Site

When browsing through stories on the newly-established media outlet USAReally.com, you may think that you are reading a procedural-generated site that exists entirely from search engine optimization tricks, stealing articles from more established outlets and reposting them as if they were original. However, a closer inspection shows that there are no advertisements on the site... → Read More

Colangelo’s Sock Puppets? Open Source Sleuthing Methods in Recent NBA Scandal

On May 29, The Ringer published an investigation into five Twitter accounts that had apparent links to Bryan Colangelo, the President of Basketball Operations of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. Colangelo has since confirmed that he does operate one of these accounts — @phila1234567 — but is apparently only used for monitoring news, and does not tweet. The... → Read More

American-Made Bomb Used in Airstrike on Yemen Wedding

On April 22, the Saudi-led coalition carried out multiple airstrikes on a wedding in Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate, with reports of at least 33 dead, including the bride. Reportedly, the majority of casualties were women and children. Survivors of the attack described how the jets continued to circle the bombing site after the attack, preventing first... → Read More

Russian Meddling in North Carolina Politics, or Cialis Spam?

North Carolina congressional candidate Linda Coleman made national headlines last week when her campaign discovered that an old domain used for a previous election — LindaForNC.com — was hijacked by a Russian. Coleman saw political motives behind the incident, calling the “tampering” an “underhanded and deceptive” move. A number of local and national news articles... → Read More

How to Archive Open Source Materials

Throughout this story, click on any of the images to view in full resolution. When conducting open source investigations, an ever-present issue is how to archive away the materials you are researching. For example, a social media post may be deleted by a user after you publish an investigation, or a video on YouTube showing... → Read More

How to Use and Interpret Data from Strava’s Activity Map

Recently, the fitness app Strava published a “heatmap” of trillion of data points visualizing the information of users who submitted or synchronized their fitness activity to their servers. This data includes both fitness information recorded directly on the fitness app and data synchronized with the app from a number of physical fitness trackers, such as... → Read More

The Kremlin’s Shifting, Self-Contradicting Narratives on MH17

Just a few hours after the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), the circumstances that caused the tragedy came to light: a Buk-M1 Russian-made anti-aircraft missile system was fired by either Russian-led separatists or Russian forces from an area near Snizhne, Ukraine, leading to the death of 298 civilians aboard the passenger plane. Over... → Read More

Details on Newly Uncovered GRU Online Personas

On Christmas, Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post from published two widely shared reports on GRU (Russian military intelligence) activities in creating fake profiles on social networks, along with “astroturfed” political activist groups. The first, longer article, entitled “Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options,” was written by Nakashima along with Greg… → Read More

British Intelligence Report Confirms Russian Military Origin of MH17 Murder Weapon

Today, December 20, the British Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament published its 122-page annual report. This report covers a wide range of topics, including cyber security, the status of the UK’s international relationships, the threat of foreign fighters, and so on. However, one almost anecdotal detail in the Russian objectives and activity against UK and... → Read More

“New” George Papadopoulos Photograph Actually Years Old

An account that apparently belongs to George Papadopoulos shared a photograph with the text “#business” on October 25, 2017, just days before news broke that Papadopoulos pled guilty to the FBI for making false statements to the FBI regarding meetings connected to Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. For more information on Papadopoulos’s plea and... → Read More

How to Conduct Comprehensive Video Collection

Much of Bellingcat’s work requires intense research into particular events, which includes finding every possible photograph, video, and witness account that will help inform our analysis. Perhaps most notably, we exhaustively researched the events surrounding the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over eastern Ukraine. The photographs and videos taking near the crash... → Read More

Florida Trump Flash Mobs Organized by the Russian “Troll Factory”

On September 20, the Daily Beast published a report alleging that a series of flash mobs in support of Donald Trump were orchestrated by the so-called Russian “troll factory.” This same Russian operation has organized a number of projects over the years, from hordes of commenters leaving pro-Kremlin messages on news articles and blogs, to operating a... → Read More

How to Verify Fake Photos and Videos by Confirming Time and Place

For more about spotting doctored photos and fake videos, sign up for my DigitalEd training on September 20, where I’ll offer more tips about geolocation and image verification. Sign up here: How to Verify Photos and Vidoes. → Read More

How to Verify Fake Photos and Videos by Confirming Time and Place

For more about spotting doctored photos and fake videos, sign up for my DigitalEd training on September 20, where I’ll offer more tips about geolocation and image verification. Sign up here: How to Verify Photos and Vidoes. → Read More