Perfectly Awesome

Putin had Christo Grozev in his sights. Grozev was way ahead of him.

This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.

Engineers at the Naval Research Lab launched a spy satellite program called Parcae and revolutionized signals intelligence at the height of the Cold War. The program relied on computers to sift through intelligence data, providing a technological edge at a pivotal moment in the Cold War.

"I'm now going to offer you a megalomaniac explanation of the course of events"

I’ve always admired people who can successfully navigate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Castle,” a term of dread for the many government and corporate agencies that have an inordinate amount of power over our permanent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chillingly absurd as the labyrinth the character K navigates in Kafka’s last allegorical novel.

How one man infiltrated Al Qaeda and the broader jihadist world — and how his double life likely led to PTSD, depression, and ultimately his death.

"Hey boss, I've just managed to kill a whole bunch of people here"

Its agents are often depicted as malevolent puppet masters—or as bumbling idiots. The truth is even less comforting.

Repressing dissent, putting innocent people in prison, flubbing operations abroad—Iran just can’t seem to get out of its own way.

Online posts can be taken down by platforms or deleted by those posting them. That's why Bellingcat has created a tool, the Auto Archiver, to help quickly and easily archive online content.

It all goes back to one man in the 1950s: a military-intelligence expert in psychological warfare.

Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present.

SpyTalk plumbs Chinese intel history for facts behind David Ignatius's semi-fictional "The Tao of Deception"

David Ignatius’ latest thriller is a tour de space force, spies and satellite warfare

GRU Unit 29155, Russia’s assassination and sabotage squad, blew up ammunition warehouses in Czechia. It had help from Elena and Nikolai Šapošnikov, a family of deep-cover spies working as arms dealers.

Staff went undercover on Walmart, eBay and other marketplaces as a third-party seller called ‘Big River.’ The mission: to scoop up information on pricing, logistics and other business practices.

Explore the fascinating world of vintage spy cameras from the Golden Age of Espionage. Discover covert wonders in this intriguing collection.

Investigating the financial transactions of an organisation can reveal details about its connections and funding. Here's a quick guide on how to do it.

The suspect’s identification by intelligence agencies raises big questions for one of Australia’s neighbours and about China’s attempts to wield influence in the Pacific.

Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek wasn’t just responsible for Germany’s largest financial fraud in history. He was also a decade-long Russian spy.

From 2020: The unmasking of the Salisbury poisoning suspects by a new digital journalism outfit was an embarrassment for Putin – and evidence that Russian spies are not what they once were. By Luke Harding

Meet the guy who taught US intelligence agencies how to make the most of the ad tech ecosystem, "the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man."

Caught a Russian spy? You may try to flip them, or expel them – an interview with former Hungarian counterintelligence officer Ferenc Katrein

For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.

Every day, millions of barrels of oil are being transported by ships with obscured ownership and origin. But is the game up?

From repeatedly crippling thousands of gas stations to setting a steel mill on fire, Predatory Sparrow’s offensive hacking has now targeted Iranians with some of history's most aggressive cyberattacks.

Experts say plotters’ most crucial task is to convince other soldiers and officers that success is assured. Plus, our columnist’s recommendations for reading up on coups, and modern Russia.

Digging through manuals for security cameras, a group of gearheads found sinister details and ignited a new battle in the US-China tech war.

The attackers were in thousands of corporate and government networks. They might still be there now. Behind the scenes of the SolarWinds investigation.

Runa Sandvik has made it her life’s work to protect journalists against cyberattacks. Authoritarian regimes are keeping her in business.

How the downfall of one intelligence agent revealed the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.

When a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launched a national security mission to geostationary Earth orbit Jan. 15, the Space Force revealed that three of the payloads onboard were developed by one of its most s…

As investigators piece together clues, Russia has quietly taken steps to begin expensive repairs on the giant gas pipeline, complicating theories about who was behind September’s sabotage.

A far-right extremist wanted to advertise his clothing brand. Instead he’s given us an unintended lesson on the power of open source research methods.

A Russian spy with an unconventional Peruvian backstory, and a chaotic private life, managed to befriend and engage numerous staff and officers at a NATO base in Italy, a Bellingcat investigation has found.

The story of Josephine Baker.

Former President Donald Trump’s stockpile of allegedly classified documents puts a system for hiding information in the spotlight.

What are letters of marque and reprisal, and who is on the US’s list of Block Persons?

“MDZhB” has been broadcasting since 1982. No one knows why.

An alleged GRU spy who sought access to the International Criminal Court as an intern left a long and detailed trail on social media.

Using a custom encryption scheme within music notation, Merryl Goldberg and three other US musicians slipped information to Soviet performers and activists known as the Phantom Orchestra.

A Times investigation reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO’s Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban.

I’ve always admired people who can successfully navigate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Castle,” a term of dread for the many government and corporate agencies that have an inordinate amount of power over our permanent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chillingly absurd as the labyrinth the character K navigates in Kafka’s last allegorical novel.

A trip through the intentionally unseeable World of Hiding Data in Imagery

This is the previously classified story of a Hail Mary plan, a Dirty Dozen crew of lowlifes, and a woman who wouldn’t bow to authority as she fought to bring three captured CIA agents home from Cuba.

Thousands of soldiers, civilians and contractors operate under false names, on the ground and in cyberspace. A Newsweek investigation of the ever-growing and unregulated world of "signature reduction."

Establishing the time of day that a video or image was taken can be a difficult and frustrating task for open source researchers. But measuring the length of shadows can help provide a solution.

The mission, still a secret to this day, was so dangerous many men bid emotional goodbyes...

The plan to kill Osama bin Laden—from the spycraft to the assault to its bizarre political backdrop—as told by the people in the room.

Cameron Ortis was an RCMP officer privy to the inner workings of Canada's national security—and in a prime position to exploit them

Noor Khan, a pacifist descendant of Indian Royalty became a famed World War II spy for Britain’s Special Operations Executive.

America’s bold response to the Soviet Union depended on an unknown spy agency operative whose story can at last be told

From Sergei Skripal to Alexei Navalny, Russia’s attempts to silence its enemies have been forensically exposed. At the centre of these revelations has been investigative unit Bellingcat

How a team of spies in Mexico got their hands on Russia's space secrets—and tried to change the course of the Cold War.

He wanted to learn about the Miami drug world and had been told I could help.

Bellingcat and its partners reported that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was implicated in the near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning of Alexey Navalny on 20 August 2020. The report identified eight clandestine operatives with medical and chemical/biological warfare expertise working under the guise of the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute who had tailed Alexey Navalny on more than 30 […]

Sadly, the 1-gram spy craft couldn’t withstand a gentle breeze, but later dragonfly-inspired UAVs proved far more capable

Conducting a Twitter network analysis uncovers a widespread bot network targeting West Papua with pro-Indonesian Government content on major social platforms.

The regime in Pyongyang has sent hundreds of programmers to other countries. Their mission: Make money by any means necessary. Here's what their lives are like.

This is the story of a little-known FBI forensics lab and how it changed the war on terror.

The untold story of how digital detectives unraveled the mystery of Olympic Destroyer—and why the next big cyberattack will be even harder to crack.

The Iranian approach to proxy warfare offers a surprising lesson.

Translations:English (UK)EspañolFlight tracking is an accessible and useful tool for open source investigators. Being able to track the movements of aircraft belonging to powerful individuals and armed forces can add important details to stories, or even uncover entire new narratives. There are several commercial and hobby websites that allow us to do just that. The […]

Dictators and assassins are using banned nerve agents again.

Hawks in Israel and America have spent more than a decade agitating for war against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Will Trump finally deliver?

Nearly all the world’s counterfeits come from China. Pinkerton is on the case.

Translations:English (UK)Русский (Россия)In the first part of this “GRU Globetrotters” series, Bellingcat and its investigative partner The Insider teamed up with BBC Newsnight to trace the London movements and potential role of Russian GRU officer Denis Sergeev during the time that the Skripals were poisoned in Salisbury. The research was made possible thanks to telephone […]

Find out more about the shows on Sky HISTORY's TV channel, with plenty to read and watch on your favourite historical topics.

Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts.

The International Spy Museum details the audacious plan that involved a reclusive billionaire, a 618-foot-long ship, and a great deal of stealth

Last week, as America’s top national security experts convened in Aspen, a strangely inquisitive Uber driver showed up, too.

The hit on Sergei Skripal.

The home phone of FBI special agent Michael Rochford rang in the middle of the night on August 2, 1985. He grabbed it and heard the voice of his FBI supervisor. “There’s a plane coming in, a high-level defector.” The day before, a Soviet man had walked into the US consulate in Rome. He had