Nathan Patin

Nathan Patin

@nathanpatin.bsky.social

digital investigator based in Colorado || former @Bellingcat member || former adjunct at Georgetown

6,164 Followers 142 Following 281 Posts Joined Nov 2024
1 day ago
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René Redzepi Steps Down at Noma Amid Allegations of Past Abuse

Nice palate cleanser www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/d...

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1 day ago
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Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature The feature, which Grammarly shut down Wednesday, presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—without their consent.

I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.

State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.

www.wired.com/story/gramma...

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1 day ago
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Exclusive: Foreign hacker in 2023 compromised Epstein files held by FBI, source and documents show The hack occurred after a server at the Child Exploitation Forensic Lab in the FBI’s New York Field Office was inadvertently left vulnerable by a special agent.

Scoop: Here’s the bonkers story of how a foreign hacker inadvertently (?) broke into an evidence server holding FBI Epstein material in 2023 and then threatened to call in law enforcement when they found it was full of CSAM.
www.reuters.com/world/us/for...

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1 day ago
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U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says

A military investigation has determined the U.S. carried out the deadly Tomahawk strike on an Iranian elementary school, according to U.S. officials & others familiar with the preliminary findings. Latest w/ Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt, Tyler Pager, Helene Cooper

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/u...

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1 day ago
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Who’s a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans? Take Our Quiz. (Gift Article) A.I. chatbots contain the sum of all human knowledge. That can make them pretty good writers.

Fun quiz — I got 4/5 human (I recognized the Sagan quote though) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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3 days ago

We are aware of recent reports regarding targeted phishing attacks that have resulted in account takeovers of some Signal users, including government officials and journalists. We take this very seriously. 1/7

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3 days ago

“Both the sender and receiver hold matching one-time pads, identical sheets of random numbers used to encode and decode each message. Once used, the sheet is destroyed. The encryption is considered unbreakable.”

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3 days ago
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Video Shows US Tomahawk Missile Strike Next to Girls’ School in Iran - bellingcat New video footage shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility in Minab, Iran, on Feb 28, showing for the first time that the US struck the area. The footag...

ICYMI: Yesterday, @bellingcat.com analyzed a video showing the attack on the Minab IRGC base that killed at least 168 people (mostly children) at the Shajareh Teyyebeh girl's elementary school.

We concluded the attack on the base involved a US Tomahawk missile.

www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

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4 days ago
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U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows

U.S. Tomahawk hit naval base beside Iranian school, video shows
From @malachy.bsky.social and @johnismay.bsky.social
Free gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/w...

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6 days ago
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“Bombs will fall Everywhere”: The American, Israeli and Iranian Weapons Being Deployed in Middle East - bellingcat Bellingcat has been monitoring strikes across the Middle East and has identified a wide variety of weapons that have been used in the conflict so far, including missiles and drones.

Here's what Bellingcat has been up to this week:
Bellingcat analysed imagery and reporting from the first days of the conflict with Iran to identify US, Israeli and Iranian munitions now being deployed.
www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

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6 days ago

And X helpfully provides a built-in deanonymization LLM called Grok

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1 week ago
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Bellingcat’s New Tool to Explore Historical and Spatial Flight Data Turnstone can visualise historical trends in flight data or filter them by geography, aircraft type and other parameters.

Trying to make sense of an aircraft’s movements during a conflict? Context is everything. That’s why we built Turnstone, an open source tool that searches historical flight data to allow researchers to explore flight patterns over time and in specific locations. www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

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1 week ago
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U.S. and EU police shut down LeakBase, a site accused of sharing stolen passwords and hacking tools | TechCrunch Authorities say LeakBase was "one of the world’s largest online forums for cybercriminals," and maintained an archive of hacked databases containing hundreds of millions of passwords.

U.S. and EU police say they've taken down LeakBase, “one of the world’s largest online forums for cybercriminals” for sharing stolen passwords and hacking tools.

The site now displays a seizure notice.

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1 week ago
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The FBI Is Using AI to Hack Targets AI is a “game changer” for what the FBI calls remote access operations, an FBI official said in response to a 404 Media question on Tuesday.

New from 404 Media: the FBI is using AI to hack targets. FBI official was talking about "remote access operations," FBI's term for hacking. FBI said it's a "game changer". The comments were unusually candid about FBI's very secretive hacking operations. www.404media.co/the-fbi-is-u...

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1 week ago
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Yeah, so basically Mandiant and iVerify released a paper today about this spoopy thingy called "Coruna".

Coruna is very, very silly. Mandiant and iVerify discovered SOMEONE (they don't say who) developed some hardcore iOS zero day exploits. It exploited how iOS devices handled visiting

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1 week ago
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A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now in the Hands of Foreign Spies and Criminals A highly sophisticated set of iPhone hijacking techniques has likely infected tens of thousands of phones or more. Clues suggest it was originally built for the US government.

A full iOS exploitation toolkit, "Coruna," has been found in the wild, hacking iPhones that visited infected websites, used by Russian spies targeting Ukrainians and thieves targeting Chinese crypto holders. And it may have been originally created for the US government. www.wired.com/story/coruna...

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1 week ago
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Threat actors are abusing the redirection-to-URL feature of legitimate OAuth services to redirect the targets of phishing campaigns to malicious downloads.

Attacks are ongoing and have targeted government and public-sector organizations.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/securi...

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1 week ago
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CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. ICE has bought access to similar t...

New from 404 Media: CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples' movements, according to an internal DHS document. Shows for the first time DHS tracked phones via process for putting ads in ordinary apps—video games, fitness apps, many more www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-i...

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1 week ago
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I built a free tool that shows how night-time lights have changed anywhere on Earth.

Here's how it works and why it's useful for monitoring conflict, disasters, development and growth. 👇

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1 week ago
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Iranian Hackers Use Elon Musk’s Starlink To Stay Online As the attacks continue, Iranians have turned to Space X’s satellite internet technology — including one of the country’s most notorious hacker crews, which is claiming retaliatory cyberattacks agains...

🚨NEW🚨 One of Iran's most notorious hacker crews, linked by Israelis to Tehran's intelligence apparatus, is using Elon Musk's Starlink to stay online.

It also has a blue tick account on Elon Musk's X, where it's been advertising its unverified retaliatory hacks.

www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

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1 week ago
 Smoke rising over the Bandars Abbas Naval Harbour in Iran on March 2. Fires at the Jebel Ali Port on March 1.

Planet has just released new high-res images from the Middle East conflict.

Left: Smoke rising over the Bandars Abbas Naval Harbour in Iran on March 2.

Right: Fires at the Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, UAE on March 1.

(Credit: Planet Labs PBC)

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1 week ago
ICE Contracts - Distributed Denial of Secrets Details on ICE contracts with over 6,000 different entities ranging from private businesses to government agencies and even dozens of universities. Some of the notable firms include Anduril, HBGary, L...

DHS's Office of Industry Partnership was hacked by a group called "Department of Peace" and info about ICE contracts with over 6,000 companies is now published on @ddosecrets.org!

Enjoy 🧊🔨 ddosecrets.org/article/ice-...

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2 weeks ago
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The Government Just Made it Harder to See What Spy Tech it Buys On Wednesday, the government stopped supporting FPDS.gov, an indispensable resource for finding what ICE, the FBI, and every other agency is buying. Its replacement site completely sucks.

New: the government just made it harder to see what spy tech it buys. This includes ICE, the FBI, essentially any agency. Why? Because they decided to retire the perfectly good system for searching contracts and replaced it with one that fucking sucks

www.404media.co/the-governme...

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2 weeks ago
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Last May, Tennessee Highway Patrol joined ICE on the streets of Nashville.

We @lighthousereports.com + partners mapped the traffic stops and used 1M+ ICE records, dashcam video, and court files to show how supposed routine encounters became deportations.

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2 weeks ago
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FBI Got Grok to Hand Over Prompts Used to Create Nonconsensual Porn The FBI obtained prompts used to make more than 200 sexual videos of a woman in a harassment case.

New: the FBI got Grok to hand over the prompts a suspect used to generate nonconsensual porn. Connected to a harassment case. Pretty rare to see a Grok search warrant like this

www.404media.co/fbi-subpoena...

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3 weeks ago

Want to investigate something using open sources but not sure where to start? 🧵
We’ve gathered some of our go-to resources for learning, practicing, and collaborating on open source research - whether you’re brand new or sharpening your skills...

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2 weeks ago

New —> OpenAI uses the ChatGPT logs of a Chinese law enforcement official to trace a sprawling covert influence operation aimed at intimidating Chinese dissidents worldwide & denigrating the Japanese prime minister: www.cnn.com/2026/02/25/p...

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2 weeks ago
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This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to ...

New: this app warns you if someone is wearing smart glasses nearby.

Meta plans to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. A 404 Media reader made this app after we showed men filming people w/o their consent, and DHS officials were wearing the glasses www.404media.co/this-app-war...

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2 weeks ago
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Reporter's Notebook: How to Investigate Shadow Fleets Tracing a ship's flag is often the first step toward uncovering bigger stories of corruption, smuggling, or sanctions evasion.

Tracing a ship's flag is often the first step toward uncovering bigger stories of corruption, smuggling, or sanctions evasion.

www.occrp.org/en/feature/p...

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2 weeks ago
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Today in Have LLMs finally mastered geolocation (cc @foeke.bsky.social)

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