Fighting Misinformation WithPsychological Science. In recent years, the term has become especially associated with the spread of "fake news" on social media as a strategy of . Definition, examples, prevention tips. Intentionally created conspiracy theories or rumors. Watson says there are two main elements to a pretext: a character played by the scam artist, and a plausible situation in which that character might need or have a right to the information they're after. Most misinformation and disinformation that has circulated about COVID-19 vaccines has focused on vaccine development, safety, and effectiveness, as well as COVID-19 denialism. Many threat actors who engage in pretexting will masquerade as HR personnel or finance employees to target C-Level executives. As reported by KrebsOnSecurity, others spoof banks and use SMS-based text messages about suspicious transfers to call up and scam anyone who responds. This entails establishing credibility, usually through phone numbers or email addresses of fictitious organizations or people. Pretexting attackers commonly create pretexting scams - a pretense or fabricated story that seems reasonable - along with other social engineering techniques, such as impersonation . If you tell someone to cancel their party because you think it will rain, but then it doesn't rain, that's misinformation. APA collaborated with American Public Health Association, National League of Cities, and Research!America to host a virtual national conversation about the psychology and impact of misinformation on public health. A controlled experiment performed by the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, and Google revealed that a staggering 45-98% of people let curiosity get the best of them, plugging in USB drives that they find. "The spread of disinformation and misinformation is made possible largely through social networks and social messaging," the report notes. Finally, if a pizza guy tries to follow you inside your office building, tell them to call the person who ordered it to let them in. Researchers have developed definitions of the three primary categories of false information: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation ( Santos-D . Written by experts in the fight against disinformation, this handbook explores the very nature of journalism with modules on why trust matters; thinking critically about how digital technology and social platforms are conduits of the information disorder; fighting back against disinformation and misinformation through media and information . The videos never circulated in Ukraine. Compared to misinformation, disinformation is a relatively new word, first recorded in 1965-70. DISINFORMATION. Pretexting is confined to actions that make a future social engineering attack more successful. A recent phishing campaign used LinkedIn branding to trick job hunters into thinking that people at well-known companies like American Express and CVS Carepoint had sent them a message or looked them up using the social network, wrote ThreatPost. Youre deliberately misleading someone for a particular reason, she says. This, in turn, generates mistrust in the media and other institutions. Here are some of the good news stories from recent times that you may have missed. Another difference between misinformation and disinformation is how widespread the information is. Providing tools to recognize fake news is a key strategy. Criminals will often impersonate a person of authority, co-worker, or trusted organization to engage in back-and-forth communication prior to launching a targeted spear phishing attack against their victim. What Stanford research reveals about disinformation and how to address it. In . Laurie Budgar is an award-winning journalist specializing in lifestyle, health, travel and business, and contributes regularly to RD.com as well as other national magazines and websites. Pretexting is another form of social engineering where attackers focus on creating a pretext, or a fabricated scenario, that they can use to steal someones personal information. The attacker might impersonate a delivery driver and wait outside a building to get things started. Phishing is the most common type of social engineering attack. When in doubt, dont share it. Disinformation: Fabricated or deliberately manipulated audio/visual content. It can lead people to espouse extreme viewseven conspiracy theorieswithout room for compromise. And when trust goes away from established resources, West says, it shifts to places on the Internet that are not as reliable. Always request an ID from anyone trying to enter your workplace or speak with you in person. Any security awareness training at the corporate level should include information on pretexting scams. Norton 360 with LifeLock, all-in-one, comprehensive protection against viruses, malware, identity theft, online tracking and much, much more. Disinformation definition, false information, as about a country's military strength or plans, disseminated by a government or intelligence agency in a hostile act of tactical political subversion: Soviet disinformation drove a wedge between the United States and its Indonesian allies. It prevents people from making truly informed decisions, and it may even steer people toward decisions that conflict with their own best interests. The report collected data from 67 contributing organizations, covering over 53,000 incidents and 2,216 confirmed data breaches.*. In this scenario, aperson posing as an internet service provider shows up on your doorstep for a routinecheck. If they clicked on the email links, recipients found themselves redirected to pages designed to steal their LinkedIn credentials. Josh Fruhlinger is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. This type of false information can also include satire or humor erroneously shared as truth. Don't worry: if they're legit, they've got a special box that will keep the pizza warm for the few extra minutes it'll take to deliver it. Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. The fire triangle represents the three elements a fire needs to burn: oxygen, heat, and a fuel. The KnowBe4 blog gives a great example of how a pretexting scammer managed to defeat two-factor authentication to hack into a victim's bank account. It also involves choosing a suitable disguise. Here are our five takeaways on how online disinformation campaigns and platform responses changed in 2020, and how they didn't. 1. Usually, misinformation falls under the classification of free speech. She also recommends employing a healthy dose of skepticism anytime you see an image. The catch? How phishing via text message works, Sponsored item title goes here as designed, 14 real-world phishing examples and how to recognize them, Social engineering: Definition, examples, and techniques, lays out the techniques that underlie every act of pretexting, managed to defeat two-factor authentication to hack into a victim's bank account, obtain or attempt to obtain, to attempt to disclose or cause to disclose, customer information of a financial institution by false pretenses or deception, pick and choose among laws to file charges under, passed the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, The 10 most powerful cybersecurity companies, 7 hot cybersecurity trends (and 2 going cold), The Apache Log4j vulnerabilities: A timeline, Using the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to address organizational risk, 11 penetration testing tools the pros use. Like many social engineering techniques, this one relies on people's innate desire to be helpful or friendly; as long as there's some seemingly good reason to let someone in, people tend to do it rather than confront the tailgater. Strengthen your email security now with the Fortinet email risk assessment. Misinformation can be harmful in other, more subtle ways as well. Our brains do marvelous things, but they also make us vulnerable to falsehoods. A high-level executive can be misled into thinking they are speaking with someone else within the firm or at a partner company as part of a spear-phishing attack. We are no longer supporting IE (Internet Explorer) as we strive to provide site experiences for browsers that support new web standards and security practices. We could check. There's one more technique to discuss that is often lumped under the category of pretexting: tailgating. What do we know about conspiracy theories? This example demonstrates something of a pretexting paradox: the more specific the information a pretexter knows about you before they get in touch with you, the more valuable the information they can convince you to give up. Disinformation created by American fringe groupswhite nationalists, hate groups, antigovernment movements, left-wing extremistsis growing. If you do share somethingeven if its just to show others how blatantly false something isits better to take a screenshot than to hit share, which only encourages the algorithms to continue to spread it. Ubiquiti Networks transferred over $40 million to con artists in 2015. Alternatively, they can try to exploit human curiosity via the use of physical media. As the scenario plays out, the attacker would ask for bank or credit card information to help the process along and that's the information they need to steal money right out from our accounts. disinformation vs pretexting This way, you know thewhole narrative and how to avoid being a part of it. That requires the character be as believable as the situation. The distinguishing feature of this kind . Pretexting is also a key part of vishing a term that's a portmanteau of "voice" and "phishing" and is, in essence, phishing over the phone. The stuff that really gets us emotional is much more likely to contain misinformation.. The whole thing ended with HP's chairwoman Patricia Dunn resigning in disgrace and criminal charges being filed (more on which in a moment). But theyre not the only ones making headlines. APA and the Civic Alliance collaborated to address the impact of mis- and disinformation on our democracy. The European Journalism Centre just put out a new edition of its Verification Handbook that addresses disinformation and media manipulation. In other cases detected by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), malicious actors set up fake SSA websites to steal those peoples personal information instead. This benefit usually assumes the form of a service, whereas baiting usually takes the form of a good. For financial institutions covered by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA) which is to say just about all financial institutions it's illegal for any person to obtain or attempt to obtain, to attempt to disclose or cause to disclose, customer information of a financial institution by false pretenses or deception. Examining the pretext carefully, Always demanding to see identification. Contributing writer, In these attacks, the scammer usually impersonates a trusted entity/individual and says they need specific details from a user to confirm their identity. Can understanding bias in news sources help clarify why people fall prey to misinformation and disinformation? Smishing is phishing by SMS messaging, or text messaging. 2021 NortonLifeLock Inc. All rights reserved. As for a service companyID, and consider scheduling a later appointment be contacting the company. A report released by Neustar International Security Council (NISC) found 48% of cybersecurity professionals regard disinformation as threats, and of the remainder, 49% say that threat is very . The goal is to put the attacker in a better position to launch a successful future attack. In the end, he says, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.. Also, because of pretexting, this attacker can easily send believable phishing emails to anyone they form a rapport with. A baiting attack lures a target into a trap to steal sensitive information or spread malware. Employees should always make an effort to confirm the pretext as part of your organizations standard operating procedures. Impersonating the CFO, for example, the attacker will contact someone in the accounting or purchasing team and ask them to pay an invoice - one that is fraudulent, unbeknownst to the employee. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. The spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more. This attack technique involves using phone calls to coerce victims into divulging private information or giving attackers access to the victim's computer. Harassment, hate speech, and revenge porn also fall into this category. Using information gleaned from public sources and social media profiles, they can convince accounts payable personnel at the target company to change the bank account information for vendors in their files, and manage to snag quite a bit of cash before anyone realizes. According to the FBI, BEC attacks cost organizations more than $43 billion between 2016 and 2021. In an attempt to cast doubt on Ukrainian losses, for instance, Russia circulated a video claiming Ukrainian casualties were fake newsjust a bunch of mannequins dressed up as corpses. Cybersecurity Terms and Definitions of Jargon (DOJ). Pretexting is a tactic attackers use and involves creating scenarios that increase the success rate of a future social engineering attack will be successful. And to avoid situations like Ubiquiti's, there should be strong internal checks and balances when it comes to large money transfers, with multiple executives needing to be consulted to sign off of them. Thats why its crucial for you to able to identify misinformation vs. disinformation. "Fake news" exists within a larger ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, Workload Protection & Cloud Security Posture Management, Application Delivery and Server Load-Balancing, Digital Risk Protection Service (EASM|BP|ACI), Content Security: AV, IL-Sandbox, credentials, Security for 4G and 5G Networks and Services.

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