About Me
I am Etienne “tek” Maynier, an activist, security analyst and researcher.
I am currently working as a Technologist in the infosec team of Human Rights Watch to protect the organization against digital threats.
Previously, I cofounded and was an active member of Echap, a non profit supporting women shelter on technology, from 2020 to 2025. I was a Mozilla Open Web Fellow in 2016 - 2017, a research fellow at the Citizen Lab from June 2017 to April 2021, and worked for Amnesty International from 2019 to 2023.
I enjoy listening and playing music, learning about popular education and political history and theory.
Publications#
- A Legal and Technical Analysis of Internet Censorship in France, March 2025
- Inventory of censorship in France, November 2024 (in French)
- Spyware Targets Human Rights Watch Staff in Jordan (Technical research), Human Rights Watch, February 2024
- Les attaques contre la société civile, angle mort de la CTI ?, MISC Mag HS n°28, January 2024
- Investigating Digital Threats: Digital Infrastructure & Investigating the Digital Threat Landscape, two chapters of the GIJN’s Reporter’s Guide to Investigating Digital Threats, April 2023
- Iran: State-Backed Hacking of Activists, Journalists, Politicians by Human Rights Watch, technical analysis, December 2022
- Measuring the (In)security of Palestinian Civil Society Websites, Middle East Law and Governance Journal, academic paper with Alexei Abrahams, October 2022 (you can find a draft version here)
- Smartphone et forensique : comment attraper Pégasus for fun and non-profit, talk at SSTIC, June 2022 (in French)
- Devices of Palestinian Human Rights Defenders Hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware, peer-review of Front Line Defenders research, November 2021
- Participation in the Pegasus project as researcher and spokesperson, July 2021
- Analyser une attaque utilisant l’outil d’intrusion commercial Cobalt Strike, MISC, July 2021
- Click and Bait: Vietnamese Human Rights Defenders Targeted with Spyware Attacks, Amnesty International, February 2021
- German-made FinSpy spyware found in Egypt, and Mac and Linux versions revealed, Amnesty International, September 2020
- India: Human Rights Defenders Targeted by a Coordinated Spyware Operation, Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab, June 2020
- Bahrain, Kuwait and Norway contact tracing apps among most dangerous for privacy, Amnesty International, May 2020
- Qatar: Contact tracing app security flaw exposed sensitive personal details of more than one million, Amnesty International, May 2020
- Targeted Surveillance Attacks in Uzbekistan: An Old Threat with New Techniques, Amnesty International, March 2020
- Missing Link: Tibetan Groups Targeted with 1-Click Mobile Exploits, the Citizen Lab, September 2019
- Burned After Reading: Endless Mayfly’s Ephemeral Disinformation Campaign, the Citizen Lab, May 2019
- Deflect Labs Report #6: Phishing and Web Attacks Targeting Uzbek Human Rights Activists and Independent Media, eQualitie, May 2019
- Deflect Labs Report #4: Anatomy of a Booter, eQualitie, January 2019
- Familiar Feeling: A Malware Campaign Targeting the Tibetan Diaspora Resurfaces, the Citizen Lab, August 2018
- Spying on a Budget: Inside a Phishing Operation with Targets in the Tibetan Community, the Citizen Lab, January 2018
- Nile Phish: Large-Scale Phishing Campaign Targeting Egyptian Civil Society, the Citizen Lab, February 2017
- It’s Parliamentary: KeyBoy and the targeting of the Tibetan Community, the Citizen Lab, November 2016
Talks & Trainings#
- May 2023, November 2023, May 2024 : Cyber Investigation Training Course for the Global Investigative Journalism Network where I covered the Digital Threat Landscape (see my slides here) and Investigating Digital Infrastructures (see my slides here)
- March 2024: Training on Surveillance and Human Rights for the American Bar Association - Rule of Law Initiative
- July 2023: Identifying Spyware and Stalkerware from a Gender-Based Violence Online Perspective for Digital Defender Partnership for Echap (see the slides here)
- May 2023: Countering Digital Surveillance with Research, Data & Art at the Mobilizing Data for Justice Workshop organized by Concordia Data Justice Hub
- June 2022: Training “Introduction contre la surveillance dans les violences conjugales” with Echap
- June 2022: Smartphone et forensique : comment attraper Pégasus for fun and non-profit at SSTIC
- May 2020: Defending Human Rights in the Age of Targeted Attacks at NorthSec
- November 2019: Hacker == Résister ? at le Capitole du Libre (in French)
- I gave a short talk on my work with the Citizen Lab at Thcon in 2019 (in French)
This website#
This website is made using Hugo and a fork of the Codex theme. The portrait drawing was made by _lila*. Many illustrations in this website come from Matt Dixon Transmissions work with his kind authorization.
The content of this website is published under CC-BY-SA license