• U.S. Disrupts Botnet China Used to Conceal Hacking of Critical Infrastructure

    In December 2023, the FBI disrupted a botnet of hundreds of U.S.-based small office/home office (SOHO) routers hijacked by People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored hackers. The Chinese government hackers used privately-owned SOHO routers infected with the “KV Botnet” malware to conceal the PRC origin of further hacking activities directed against U.S. critical infrastructure and the critical infrastructure of other foreign victims.

  • Campus Antisemitism Online: The Proliferation of Hate on Sidechat

    Antisemitism has soared in the wake of the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7th with an intensity that has shocked many. Jewish students and campus organizations, such as Hillel, report that anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiments are often being spread via campus messaging apps like Yik Yak and Sidechat, where hate can easily be masked behind a cloak of anonymity. Jewish students have reported death threats, verbal and physical assaults, and levels of intimidation that have spread fear of attending classes or in some instances even venturing outside of their dorm rooms.

  • New Russian Disinformation Campaigns Prove the Past Is Prequel

    Since 2016, conversations about disinformation have focused on the role of technology—from chatbots to deepfakes. Persuasion, however, is a fundamentally human-centered endeavor, and humans haven’t changed. Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write the fundamentals of covert influence haven’t either.

  • Fake News: Who's Better at Detecting it?

    More than 2 billion voters in 50 countries are set to go to the polls in 2024 — a record-breaking year for elections. But 2024 is also the year when artificial intelligence (AI) could flood our screens with fake news like never before. With the U.S. in election mode, a study finds Republicans are less likely to spot fake news than Democrats. Gender and education are important factors, too.

  • $2.6 Million NSF Grant for FAU’s CyberCorps Student Scholarship Program

    A $2.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will allow FAU to establish a scholarship program in the rapidly growing field of cybersecurity. The program is managed by the NSF and DHS. Designed to increase the volume and strength of the nation’s cybersecurity workforce, the program provides full scholarships and stipends to students pursuing studies at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI.

  • Slow the Scroll: Users Less Vigilant About Misinformation on Mobile Phones

    Mobile phones pack a lot of information into pocket-sized devices, which is why users may want to slow down the next time they’re scrolling through social media or checking email on a mobile app. Habitual mobile phone users engage in less information processing, and are more likely to fall for misinformation on their mobile phones than on personal computers, researchers find.

  • Truth Decay and National Security

    The line between fact and opinion in public discourse has been eroding, and with it the public’s ability to have arguments and find common ground based in fact. Two core drivers of Truth Decay are political polarization and the spread of misinformation—and these are particularly intertwined in the national security arena. Exposure to misinformation leads to increased polarization, and increased polarization decreases the impact of factual information. Individuals, institutions, and the nation as a whole are vulnerable to this vicious cycle.

     

  • Jan. 6 Was an Example of Networked Incitement − a Media and Disinformation Expert Explains the Danger of Political Violence Orchestrated Over Social Media

    The shocking events of Jan. 6, 2021 were an example of a new phenomenon: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media, and insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action. We call this phenomenon “networked incitement.” The use of social media for networked incitement foreshadows a dark future for democracies. Rulers could well come to power by manipulating mass social movements via social media, directing a movement’s members to serve as the leaders’ shock troops, online and off.

  • Identifying Types of Cyberattacks That Manipulate Behavior of AI Systems

    AI systems can malfunction when exposed to untrustworthy data – what is called “adversarial machine learning” — and attackers are exploiting this issue. New guidance documents the types of these attacks, along with mitigation approaches. No foolproof method exists as yet for protecting AI from misdirection, and AI developers and users should be wary of any who claim otherwise.

  • Fighting European Threats to Encryption: 2023 Year in Review

    Private communication is a fundamental human right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. Yet throughout 2023, politicians across Europe attempted to undermine encryption, seeking to access and scan our private messages and pictures.

  • How Verified Accounts on X Thrive While Spreading Misinformation About the Israel-Hamas Conflict

    With the gutting of content moderation initiatives at X, accounts with blue checks, once a sign of authenticity, are disseminating debunked claims and gaining more followers. Community Notes, X’s fact-checking system, hasn’t scaled sufficiently. “The blue check is flipped now. Instead of a sign of authenticity, it’s a sign of suspicion, at least for those of us who study this enough,” said one expert.

  • Evaluating the Truthfulness of Fake News Through Online Searches Increases the Chances of Believing Misinformation

    Conventional wisdom suggests that searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation would reduce belief in it. But a new study by a team of researchers shows the opposite occurs: Searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation.

  • Shadow Play: A Pro-China and Anti-U.S. Influence Operation Thrives on YouTube

    Experts have recently observed a coordinated inauthentic influence campaign originating on YouTube that’s promoting pro-China and anti-US narratives in an apparent effort to shift English-speaking audiences’ views of those countries’ roles in international politics, the global economy and strategic technology competition.

  • Hidden Fortunes and Surprising Overestimations in Cybercrime Revenue

    To what extent methodological limitations and incomplete data impact the revenue estimations of cybercriminal groups using the Bitcoin blockchain was largely unknown. A new study challenges existing figures regarding cybercriminals’ Bitcoin earnings to date, revealing the full scale of the financial impact of cybercriminal activity.

  • The Cross-Platform Evasion Toolbox of Islamic State Supporters

    Extremists exploiting platforms for their own ends and learning along the way is a tale as old as the internet and one that has become even more pronounced in the era of ubiquitous access to social media. Moustafa Ayad writes that over the past three years, a set of exploitation and evasion tactics have become central for Islamic State supporters online, and they are only getting more elaborate.