Misinfosec: Applying information security paradigms to misinformation campaigns

Abstract

State actors, private influence operators and grassroots groups are all exploiting the openness and reach of the Internet to manipulate populations at a distance, extending their decades-long struggle for “hearts and minds” via propaganda, influence operations and information warfare. Computational propaganda fueled by AI makes matters worse. The structure and propagation patterns of these attacks have many similarities to those seen in information security and computer hacking. The Credibility Coalition's MisinfosecWG working group is analyzing those similarities, including information security frameworks that could give the truth-based community better ways to describe, identify and counter misinformation-based attacks. Specifically, we place misinformation components into a framework commonly used to describe information security incidents. We anticipate that our work will give responders the ability to transfer other information security principles to the misinformation sphere, and to plan defenses and countermoves .