Today the Stanford Internet Observatory and First Draft launched attribution.news, a joint initiative to provide journalists with tools to effectively cover the origins of both cyber incidents and information operations. In the cybersecurity realm, attribution provides an answer to the critical question: who was behind the operation? This question applies to both cyberattacks in which adversaries target networks and computers, and to influence operations, where adversaries target people’s minds and emotions. Identifying who is behind an attack is complex not only from a technical perspective, as researchers analyze what occurred and how, but also at times on a political level, as governments find themselves weighing the costs and benefits of publicly naming the culpable adversary. Journalists play a critical role in helping readers understand the facts of an operation.

Attribution.news aims to unpack some of these complexities by providing a glossary of important terms, recommending best practices for journalists, creating case studies examining media coverage of recent attribution cases, and explaining models and frameworks that shape how researchers make attribution.