Sources Policy

Reference format

Every reference cited in an article should carry, at minimum, a label and

a url (matching the current sources: [{ label, url }] shape in

index.html). When adding entries to the future JSON dataset

(see templates/), use the fuller shape:

{
  "title": "Original headline or document title",
  "author": "Author or organization",
  "publisher": "Publication or site",
  "date": "YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY",
  "url": "https://...",
  "accessDate": "YYYY-MM-DD",
  "type": "PRIMARY | ACADEMIC | CONFERENCE | NEWS | ARCHIVE | INTERVIEW | COMMUNITY"
}

Source types

• PRIMARY — the subject's own writing/talk, an advisory, a CVE record,

a court document, an original code release.

• ACADEMIC — papers, theses, IEEE/ACM/USENIX publications.
• CONFERENCE — DEF CON, Black Hat, CCC talks/slides/video.
• NEWS — reputable journalism (Wired, major outlets, trade press).
• ARCHIVE — Internet Archive, Wayback Machine captures of otherwise

dead links.

• INTERVIEW — podcasts, documentaries, recorded interviews.
• COMMUNITY — Phrack, Bugtraq/Full Disclosure archives, Packet Storm,

underground zines. Useful as historical record, not treated as

automatically factual — corroborate before stating as fact.

Priority order

1. Primary sources (the researcher's own site/blog/paper/advisory, CVE/NVD,

CERT/CISA, vendor advisories).

1. Academic and conference sources (USENIX, IEEE, ACM, DEF CON, Black Hat).
2. Reliable technical/news press.
3. Wikipedia — good for discovery, not sufficient alone for a

contested or unusual claim. Cross-check anything load-bearing.

1. Community/underground material — valid as historical context, always

treated as a lead to verify, not a fact in itself.

Images

• Never scrape random images off the internet.
• Only use images with a clear, compatible license (public domain, CC-BY,

CC-BY-SA, or explicit permission).

• Record source, author, and license for every image used.
• No image is better than an unlicensed or fabricated one. Never generate or

imply a "portrait" of a real person that isn't an actual photo of them.

Extraordinary claims

The more extraordinary or damaging a claim, the more independent

corroboration it requires before publication. A single unverified source is

not enough for claims like criminal conduct, nation-state attribution, or

identity of a pseudonymous figure.