Erased: The curious case of UyghurEdit++

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here – "Erased: The Curious Case of UyghurEdit++"

Podcast: Click Here
Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)
Episode Date: December 26, 2025

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Overview

This episode continues the "Erased" series, focusing on Beijing's increasingly sophisticated campaign to erase Uyghur culture—not just within China but worldwide. Host Dina Temple-Raston interviews Rebecca Brown, senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, and Raidat Kenji, developer of the UyghurEdit language tool, to uncover a chilling story: how a seemingly benign piece of cultural technology became a weapon in China's arsenal to surveil, intimidate, and undermine Uyghur identity.

The episode explores the intersection of authoritarian control and modern surveillance, revealing how the Chinese government targets vulnerable groups beyond its borders. It highlights the resilience of activists and technologists fighting back and the consequences of turning cultural lifelines into vectors of fear.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Historical Context and the Uyghur Struggle

• Uyghurs in Xinjiang: With a population of about 12 million, Uyghurs have maintained a distinct identity and culture for thousands of years, resisting assimilation into China's centralized system. (03:06)
• Escalation under Xi Jinping: When Xi Jinping became China's president in 2013, he initiated a "people’s war" against separatism, making Uyghurs a prime target. This escalated repression, mass surveillance, prohibitions on religious practices, and widespread internment. (03:30-04:01)

2. Modern Tools of Repression

• Digital Surveillance in Xinjiang:

  • Mandatory spyware apps on smartphones, QR codes outside homes, GPS trackers in cars, and pervasive Wi-Fi surveillance demonstrate the shift from traditional authoritarian tactics to digital control. (04:26-05:13)
  • "In modern times, your phone is with you almost all the time. It is like your digital fingerprints." — Rebecca Brown (04:26)

• Global Surveillance:

  • Chinese authorities have extended surveillance to Uyghurs abroad, targeting exiles and their families to monitor dissent and suppress contradictory narratives. (05:35)
  • "The next extension of surveillance is not just people within the control, but people who've left or maybe who have family." — Rebecca Brown (05:35)

3. Compromising Cultural Tools: The UyghurEdit Case

• The Trap Is Set:

  • In March, a World Uyghur Congress member received an email offering a new language tool, "UyghurEdit," supposedly developed to help preserve the Uyghur language in exile. The message came with a download link and a request to test the software. (08:39-09:22)
  • "This email said, hey, here we have this piece of software... Can you please test it and tell us, is this helpful so we can share and help the community?" — Rebecca Brown (09:22)

• Detection of a Government-Backed Attack:

  • After clicking the link, the recipients received Google notifications: “You've been targeted by a government backed attacker.” Alarmed, activists messaged Citizen Lab. (09:51-10:15)

4. Citizen Lab’s Forensic Analysis

• Investigating the Malware:
  • Rebecca's team quickly identified the email as phishing—sent from an imposter using an unofficial address. (10:48)
  • The program included two stages:
    • First, reconnaissance malware checked for the correct target. (13:59)
    • Second, more aggressive spyware activated, stealing files, monitoring keystrokes, and enabling full remote surveillance. (14:13)
  • "If they had run it on the computer... it would have ended up giving access to their computer to the Chinese government." — Rebecca Brown (14:34)

5. Impact on the Uyghur Community and the Developer

• Raidat Kenji’s Reaction:

  • Kenji, UyghurEdit’s original developer, was shocked, fearing he had introduced malware himself. He later learned his open-source code had been cloned and weaponized, undermining trust in his work. (15:08-15:34)
  • "I curse the ones responsible for that." — Raidat Kenji (15:59)

• Restoring Trust:

  • In response, Kenji openly warned the community and urged them only to download UyghurEdit from GitHub, emphasizing the safety and transparency of his software. (17:22-17:49)
  • “I uploaded Uyghur Edit on GitHub. Its source code is open for everyone to benefit from and view. There is no hidden malware in what I've shared.” — Raidat Kenji (17:39)

6. The Broader Consequences of Digital Erasure

• Weaponizing Fear:

  • Even moderately sophisticated, these attacks are powerful because they sow distrust in crucial cultural tools: “If even a legitimate cultural tool like Uyghur Edit can be weaponized, then it would make people wonder what’s safe.” — Dena Temple Raston (16:49)
  • “Once this comes to light, people can be very afraid of these tools... is this being weaponized or is this going to harm me or can I trust this?” — Rebecca Brown (08:08)

• Beijing’s Transnational Reach:

  • Brown emphasizes that China’s strategy is to reach outside its borders to erase Uyghur language, culture, and autonomy—turning exile into digital exile as well. (18:03-18:26)

• Resistance Through Creation:

  • Brown and Kenji both call for resilience in the face of digital fear—encouraging Uyghurs to keep developing and using their own tools to maintain language, history, and community. (18:42-18:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rebecca Brown on Daily Surveillance:

  • “They always had their own identity and their own culture, and they did not want to be part of the centralized system.” (03:06)
  • "China really views any pushback to the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party as a threat." (03:53)
  • “There’s a lot that can be discovered about you by having that type of access. More than just surveillance cameras... this level of information about a person’s life.” (07:45)

• Dena Temple Raston on Digital Erasure:

  • “This is what erasure looks like now. It doesn’t always come with police raids or prison camps. Sometimes it arrives in your inbox, wrapped in good intentions...” (18:26)

• Raidat Kenji on Open Source Ethics:

  • “When I released Uyghur Edit, I also released its source code. Therefore it was easy to damage the software with this malware... I curse the ones responsible for that.” (15:34-15:59)
  • “To erase the Uyghur identity and to steal information about the Uyghurs. No one else does it except the spies of the Chinese Communist Party.” (17:09)

• Rebecca Brown’s Final Hope:

  • “What I’m hoping is that we won’t see that fear... and that we’ll see almost a pushback and maybe even an increase in creation of tools.” (18:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:06 — Historical context: Uyghur resistance and cultural identity
• 04:01 — Crackdown and modern surveillance in Xinjiang
• 05:35 — Surveillance expands to Uyghurs abroad
• 08:39 — The UyghurEdit phishing campaign begins
• 09:51 — Activists discover a government-backed targeting warning
• 10:48 — Clues: Email impersonation detected
• 13:59 — Technical breakdown: How the malware works
• 15:08 — UyghurEdit developer Raidat Kenji responds
• 16:29 — The sophistication behind the social engineering attack
• 17:39 — Kenji urges community to verify software origins
• 18:03 — The persistence of Chinese digital reach and risks to culture
• 18:42 — A call to resist fear and keep building cultural tools

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Conclusion

This episode offers a compelling look at how digital tools intended to preserve the Uyghur language and culture are being subverted for surveillance and repression. Through expert interviews and gripping storytelling, it illustrates both the technical and human sides of modern authoritarianism, highlighting the resilience required to maintain cultural identity in the face of transnational digital threats.

For further information: The series "Erased" continues on Click Here, wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Dena Temple Raston]

Chatgpt AI machine.

[Raidat Kenji]

Satellite engine ignition.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Click here and lift up. Hey, it's Dena. The Click Here team is taking a short breather, just long enough to get ahead on reporting for 2026. And when we come back in the new year, we've got a little surprise waiting for you. More on that soon. For now, we wanted to share a story from last summer, one we're especially proud of. It's from our Erased series, and it's an investigation into how China is trying to extinguish Uyghur culture. One law, one app, one person, one website at a time. And we look at the unlikely rebels trying to stop it. Here's the story. So tell me how you guys got involved. The bat phone went off. What happened? How did you guys.

[Rebecca Brown]

It did. It did.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Do you guys have a bat phone?

[Rebecca Brown]

Well, it's. It's very similar to a bat phone.

[Dena Temple Raston]

From Recorded Future News and prx. I'm Dena Temple Raston, and this is Click. Here's Mic Drop, an extended cut of an interview we think you'll enjoy. We're continuing our series on authoritarians and specifically the many ways Beijing authorities have worked to erase Uyghur culture and how that might affect the rest of us, too. So today we're talking to Rebecca Brown, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, a digital rights watchdog at the University of Toronto. And not so long ago, she and her team made a chilling discovery that China isn't just spying on Uyghurs at home, but anywhere they are in the world. We look at how China is doing it and the ways in which researchers like Rebecca are trying to stop them. Stay with us.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.

[Dena Temple Raston]

I'm Dena Temple west, and this is Click Here's Mic Drop. These days, about 12 million Uyghurs live in Xinjiang, a region in China's far northwest. But they've lived in Central Asia for thousands of years. They've outlasted emperors, endured dynasties like the Shang, the Tang, and the Ming. But Rebecca Brown says they've never quite bowed to Beijing.

[Rebecca Brown]

They were very far away from Beijing, kind of very remote. They always had their own identity and their own culture, and they did not want to be part of of the centralized system.

[Dena Temple Raston]

They're Muslims. They speak their own language. All of which is to say Uyghurs are outliers. And for much of the last century, that was tolerated. Until 2013.

[Raidat Kenji]

Delegates cast their ballots for China's next president.

[Rebecca Brown]

Now officially one of the most powerful men in the world, Xi Jinping.

[Dena Temple Raston]

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power, he launched what he called a people's war on what they deemed as separatism. Minorities like the Uyghurs found themselves in the crosshairs.

[Rebecca Brown]

China really views any pushback to the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party as a threat.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Beijing flooded Xinjiang with police. They banned Ramadan celebrations. They arrested more than a million people and put them in camps, calling it re education. But this wasn't just old school authoritarianism. This time, they're also wielding modern tools for oppression, Things like smartphones and spyware.

[Rebecca Brown]

In modern times, your phone is with you almost all the time. It is like your digital fingerprints. Everything you do, everywhere you go, if someone has access to that, they know probably more about you than your closest friends and family members.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Among other things, China rolled out a special app and made it mandatory to download.

[Rebecca Brown]

They said it was for safety, but would allow the authorities access to information on your phone about what you're doing in your location and where you are. It was kind of a campaign saying, you need to install this. This needs to be on your phone. And then, you know, checkpoints and random checks to make sure that it was installed.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And then they went further. QR codes outside homes, GPS trackers in cars. They began surveilling WI fi, the kind of surveillance you can do on a territory that you control. But then the Chinese government spread their surveillance web beyond their own borders, and they started targeting Uyghurs abroad.

[Rebecca Brown]

The next extension of surveillance is not just people within the control, but people who've left or maybe who have family. They want to find out who they're talking to. How is information getting in and out?

[Dena Temple Raston]

Because it wasn't just about controlling how people live their lives.

[Rebecca Brown]

They wanted it to be seen as, oh, no, we're all one nation and we're bettering the population, and this is voluntary, and everyone's happy here. And so whenever information would get out that countered that narrative, they wanted to know how it was getting out and to whom.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Even Uyghurs who've managed to flee the country aren't safe. More than half a million Uyghurs live outside China today. Some joined advocacy groups like the World Uyghur Congress. But exile doesn't necessarily mean escape. Even oceans away, Beijing's reach can be uncanny.

[Rebecca Brown]

There were reports of different campaigns that would actually find flaws in operating systems of both iPhones and Androids in order to remotely install spyware on phones.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And the entry point, not state run news, not political pamphlets, cultural lifelines turned into weapons.

[Rebecca Brown]

It was targeting websites that Uyghurs would.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Traditionally visit, websites hosting Qurans, Uyghur dictionaries, poetry archives, harmless on the surface until.

[Rebecca Brown]

You clicked an app that you would install on your phone because you know it's of interest and it would be beneficial and it's helpful, especially if you are living overseas, if you're, you know, a of these communities living in exile and you're trying to stay connected to.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Your culture, but you'd be doing the opposite, you'd be inviting surveillance into your life. What they didn't know is that they were letting the Chinese government just waltz into their pockets as well. And that's the strategy, undermine the tools meant to preserve weaker identity.

[Rebecca Brown]

There's a lot that can be discovered about you by having that type of access. More than just being able to see via surveillance cameras where people are or just knowing which house you live in. There's this level of information about a person's life by having access to their information on a computer or on a phone.

[Dena Temple Raston]

This kind of attack serves a dual purpose.

[Rebecca Brown]

This type of attack is especially harmful because not only is it feeding into the surveillance engine, but it is supporting kind of that goal of erasure. Because now once this comes to light, people can be very afraid of these tools that can be used to help maintain their cultural identity and maintain their language because they don't know is this being weaponized or is this going to harm me or can I trust this?

[Dena Temple Raston]

This isn't just conjecture. A few months ago, in March of this year, a senior member of the World Uyghur Congress received an email. The message claimed to be from an ally, someone offering help. A fellow activist who said a developer had created a new tool, something meant to help Uyghurs in exile write and preserve their language. The program was called Uyghur Edit, a word processor designed to help people type in Uyghur with a built in spell check.

[Rebecca Brown]

And so this was meant to be perfect. It's tailor made. It can make sure you've spelled things correctly and that you can write, you know, exactly as they want. When you're not trying.

[Dena Temple Raston]

The person reaching out said they needed someone to test it.

[Rebecca Brown]

This email said, hey, here we have this piece of software that was created by an anonymous developer who wants to help the Uyghur community. It's a language tool, but we don't know how to test it. Can you please test it and tell us, is this helpful so we can share and help the community?

[Dena Temple Raston]

Attached was a link to a Google Drive folder and inside a free download. But then something strange happened.

[Rebecca Brown]

They got these Google notifications saying, you've been targeted by a government backed attack.

[Dena Temple Raston]

You've been targeted by a government backed attacker. Imagine reading that line after clicking a link, thinking you were helping your community. The activists didn't hesitate. They picked up the phone, that bat phone, and called Citizen Lab.

[Rebecca Brown]

We got multiple calls all at once saying, hey, something big is going on. What should we do? What does this mean? And when something like that happens, we jump into action.

[Dena Temple Raston]

At face value, the request appeared legit. Uygheredit is a real program used and trusted by Uyghur speakers around the world. But when they look closer, they realize the email was suspicious. The sender claimed to be from a group that regularly worked with the World Uyghur Congress. But when they look closer, it was.

[Rebecca Brown]

Sent from not the official email. It was sent from another Gmail address that was trying to impersonate someone.

[Dena Temple Raston]

The file was sent to one of Rebecca's colleagues, someone who specialized in the kind of code Uyghur edit was written in. And he started looking for more clues.

[Rebecca Brown]

He kind of knew instantly what to look for. And I think he was able to figure it out in a matter of minutes. Like, oh, okay, I know what this is. I know what we need to look for.

[Dena Temple Raston]

What they found was a Trojan horse. When we come back, we'll explain how it worked. Stay with us. Support for Click here comes from GiveWell. Let's say you're a detail oriented person. You don't just go to a movie. You read the reviews first. You recon the menu before going to a restaurant. I'm guilty of that. So how do you do your homework when giving to charity? That's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is an independent resource doing rigorous and transparent research into charities. They figure out which ones do the most good for every dollar donated. And they only recommend programs with the biggest impact on helping people and saving lives. That's why over 150,000 donors have already trusted them to direct over $2.5 billion to great causes around the world, so check out GiveWell next time you're giving to charity. To make a tax deductible donation Today, go to givewell.org and pick podcast. Click here at checkout. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from. Click here again. That's givewell.org to donate or find out more.

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[Dena Temple Raston]

The download appeared to be safe on the surface, but once opened, it triggered a sequence of malware installations. The first wave included reconnaissance to confirm.

[Rebecca Brown]

That you're on the right computer, look for the username and the geography and confirm that everything is right.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Once the malware confirmed it was inside the intended target's device, a second wave of attacks began.

[Rebecca Brown]

A more capable type of malware that would be able to do things like monitor keystrokes and steal files and do a lot of that real time monitoring of what was going on on the laptop as well.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Had the activists gone all the way through with the installation, the hackers would have essentially owned their computer.

[Rebecca Brown]

If they had run it on the computer, if they had taken this email at its word that oh, we're trying to help the community, it would have ended up giving access to their computer to the Chinese government.

[Dena Temple Raston]

It would have handed the Chinese government a live feed of everything they typed in. They reached out to Rideak Kenji, the developer of Uyghur Edit, to let him know his program was being hijacked. And he said he was dumbstruck by the breach.

[Raidat Kenji]

When I first heard this news, I was very shocked because I thought I had accidentally put a virus myself into this program. But after hearing the explanation from the staff at the Citizen Lab, I heard that this Uyghur application I made was free of any problems.

[Dena Temple Raston]

This is ridat. And the thing was, he hadn't really been hacked exactly. Instead, his work had just been exploited.

[Raidat Kenji]

When I released Uyghur Edit, I also released its source code. Therefore it was easy to damage the software with this malware. It was filled with malicious software, including malware that stole information from Uyghur organizations and and Uyghur activists. I curse the ones responsible for that.

[Dena Temple Raston]

What Rebecca and her colleagues at the Citizen Lab uncovered wasn't technically sophisticated. It was blunt, almost sloppy. But that didn't matter, because the power of the attack wasn't in its code. It was in the sophistication of their approach. The attackers had taken their time. They'd built fake websites, they'd registered fake domains and faked an entire identity, all to make a malicious file look like a gift.

[Rebecca Brown]

Almost a year ago, they had started setting up infrastructure also to try and impersonate this developer. They had created domains in his name. There was just a lot of thought and intentionality behind this attack that you don't always see.

[Dena Temple Raston]

You go to all this trouble because if the code doesn't catch you, the fear just might. If even a legitimate cultural tool like Uyghur Edit can be weaponized, then it would make people wonder what's safe.

[Raidat Kenji]

To erase the Uyghur identity and to steal information about the Uyghurs. No one else does it except the spies of the Chinese Communist Party. This is simply a common tool.

[Dena Temple Raston]

So raidet went back online and posted a message. If you want to access Uyghur Edit, download it straight from GitHub. No shortcuts, no cloud folders, no mystery links.

[Raidat Kenji]

I uploaded uyghur edit on GitHub. Its source code is open for everyone to benefit from and view. There is no hidden malware in what I've shared.

[Dena Temple Raston]

He's doing what he can to try to restore people's trust, to encourage them to keep using tools that keep Uyghurs around the world still connected to their culture, their language, and to each other. But the threat isn't going away.

[Rebecca Brown]

People want to think that these digital assets, that if it is outside of China, that it's safe and that they can maintain the history and the culture and the language. But more and more, we're seeing that China is still trying to reach outside their borders in order to have that control. So that way they can try for that complete erasure.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Because this is what erasure looks like now. It doesn't always come with police raids or prison camps. Sometimes it arrives in your inbox wrapped in good intentions, kind of whispering. Don't trust the things that connect you to your culture.

[Rebecca Brown]

What I'm hoping is that we won't see that fear and that we won't see people give in to it and that we'll see almost a pushback and maybe even an increase in creation of tools.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Rebecca wants Uyghurs to keep building, to keep sharing, to keep fighting for their language and their history, digitally and otherwise. From Recorded Future News and prx, this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Sean Powers, Lucas Riley, Megan Dietrich, Zach Hirsch, Erica Gaeda and me, Dina Temple Rosten. It was edited by Karen Duffin. Special thanks today to Esma Memti Meme and Arslan He Diet. You can hear more from our series Searching for Click Here Erased. Wherever you get your podcasts, we'll be back on Tuesday with another episode of Click Here. Have a great weekend.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

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