Uncover the hidden secrets in hacked or leaked datasets with the help of a world-renowned information security expert—and become the next researcher to break a historic investigative report.

In the age of hacking and whistleblowing, the internet contains massive troves of leaked information containing goldmines of newsworthy revelations in the public interest—if you know how to unravel them. For investigative journalists or amateur researchers with or without prior programming knowledge, this book gives you the technical expertise to find and interrogate complex datasets, transforming unintelligible files into groundbreaking reports.

Through hands-on assignments and examples that highlight real-world cases, information security expert and well-known investigative journalist Micah Lee guides you through the process of analyzing leaked datasets from governments, companies, and political groups. You’ll dig into hacked files from the BlueLeaks dataset of law enforcement records, analyze social media traffic from those behind the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, hear the exclusive story of privately leaked data from the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, and much more.

You'll also learn the technical skills and Python programming basics needed for data science investigations, security concepts like disk encryption, how to work with data in JSON, CSV, and SQL formats, and tricks for using the command-line interface to explore datasets packed with secrets just waiting to be discovered.

Micah Lee is the Director of Information Security at First Look Media, The Intercept's parent company. He got his start in investigative journalism in 2013 when he helped secure communication between Edward Snowden and journalists.  Lee is an advisor to the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, a co-founder of Freedom of the Press Foundation, and  a Tor Project core contributor, and previously worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He develops open source security and privacy tools like OnionShare and Dangerzone.

Part 1: Sources and Datasets
Chapter 1: TBD
Chapter 2: Protecting Sources and Yourself
Chapter 3: Acquiring Datasets
Part 2: Tools of the Trade
Chapter 4: The Command Line Interface
Chapter 5: Exploring Datasets in the Terminal
Chapter 6: Docker, Aleph, and Making Datasets Searchable
Chapter 7: Reading Other People's Emails
Part 3: Writing Code
Chapter 8: An Introduction to Python
Chapter 9: Working with Data in Python
Part 3: Structured Data
Chapter 10: BlueLeaks, Black Lives Matter, and the CSV File Format
Chapter 11: BlueLeaks Explorer
Chapter 12: Parler, the Insurrection of January 6, and the JSON File Format
Chapter 13: Epik Fail, Extremism Research, and SQL Databases
Part 5: Case Studies
Chapter 14: Pandemic Profiteers and COVID-19 Disinformation
Chapter 15: Neo-Nazis and Their Chat Rooms
Appendixes
Appendix A: Using the Windows Subsystem for Linux
Appendix B: Scraping the Web