Disinformation Security
In the context of cybersecurity, Disinformation Security refers to the comprehensive set of strategies, technologies, and frameworks designed to detect, mitigate, and prevent the creation and spread of deliberately false or misleading information with malicious intent. It has evolved beyond traditional threats like malware and phishing to address a new and potent form of attack that targets perception, erodes trust, and can destabilize organizations, public confidence, and even national security.
Here's a breakdown of its key aspects:
What is Disinformation?
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), disinformation is false information that is intentionally crafted and spread to deceive. It's distinct from misinformation (false information spread regardless of intent) and malinformation (factual information taken out of context to cause harm). Disinformation aims to manipulate perceptions, influence decisions, and sow confusion.
Why is it a Cybersecurity Concern?
While traditional cybersecurity focuses on protecting systems and data, disinformation security focuses on protecting the integrity of information and the trust in digital environments. Disinformation campaigns can be used as a vehicle for various cyberattacks, such as:
Social Engineering: Disinformation can be used to craft highly convincing phishing, vishing, or smishing attacks, tricking users into revealing sensitive information or clicking malicious links.
Reputation Damage: Fake reviews, misleading product claims, and manipulated social media campaigns can be used to attack businesses and undermine consumer trust.
Undermining Operations: Disinformation can sow discord, spread panic, or manipulate public opinion to disrupt an organization's operations or even destabilize societal systems.
Circumventing Security Controls: Deepfakes and synthetic media can be used to impersonate individuals, bypass identity verification systems, and gain unauthorized access.
Goals of Disinformation Security
Disinformation security typically aims to achieve three primary goals:
Create systems that ensure accurate information: This involves establishing mechanisms to verify the authenticity and integrity of content.
Verify authenticity and prevent impersonation: This focuses on confirming the true origin of information and detecting attempts to mimic legitimate sources or individuals.
Monitor the spread of harmful content: This involves actively tracking and identifying the dissemination of false narratives across various platforms.
How Disinformation Security Works (Key Categories)
Disinformation security employs a multi-layered approach involving technology, processes, and human awareness:
Detection-Based Disinformation Security:
AI-driven algorithms, machine learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP): These are used to identify and flag disinformation by analyzing patterns, anomalies, and stylistic inconsistencies in text, images, and videos.
Automated fact-checking tools: These continuously monitor online conversations to detect falsehoods before they gain traction.
Deepfake detection solutions: Use forensic analysis, blockchain analysis, and digital watermarking to identify modifications or alterations to images, video, and audio.
Source Authentication Security:
Blockchain technology: Can be used to ensure the traceability and integrity of digital content, providing an immutable record of its origin.
Digital signatures, cryptographic hashing, and watermarking: These techniques verify the authenticity of digital assets like news articles, images, and videos.
Identity verification: Protection against identity impersonation using deepfakes, synthetic media, and other attempts to bypass identity and access management (IAM) systems.
Content Moderation Security:
Platform policies and guidelines: Social media platforms and online forums implement strict content moderation policies to filter out misleading or harmful content.
AI-powered moderation systems combined with human oversight: Help identify and remove disinformation at scale.
Behavioral Analysis Security:
Tracking bots and automated accounts: Focuses on identifying and preventing disinformation campaigns driven by malicious automated activity.
Data analytics tools: Assess patterns in content dissemination, engagement metrics, and origin points to flag malicious actors involved in coordinated disinformation efforts.
Human and Organizational Measures:
Disinformation awareness training: Educating users on how to spot, avoid, and respond to disinformation campaigns is crucial, as many successful cyberattacks start with social engineering tactics that leverage disinformation.
Robust communication strategies: Organizations need clear, transparent, and timely messaging, along with crisis communication plans, to counteract disinformation attacks.
Threat intelligence: Staying informed about the latest disinformation tactics and evolving attack vectors.
Collaboration: Aligning technology, people, and processes across an organization, and even partnering with third-party fact-checking organizations, is essential for a comprehensive defense.
Disinformation security is a critical and evolving field within cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of intentionally misleading information that can have significant real-world consequences for individuals, organizations, and society.
ThreatNG offers a robust solution for enhancing disinformation security by proactively identifying and managing an organization's external attack surface and digital risks. It helps to counter disinformation by revealing vulnerabilities that could be exploited to launch such campaigns or by identifying misleading content related to an organization.
Here's how ThreatNG would help:
External Discovery ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery without the need for connectors. This capability is critical for disinformation security, allowing an organization to see itself as an attacker. For example, ThreatNG can discover all public-facing assets, including forgotten or shadow IT assets, that might be used as vectors for disinformation. If a malicious actor creates a fake social media profile or a rogue website impersonating the organization, ThreatNG's external discovery could potentially identify these new, unauthorized digital footprints.
External Assessment ThreatNG provides detailed security ratings by performing various assessments, which are crucial for understanding and mitigating disinformation risks:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG can identify potential entry points for attackers by analyzing external web application components. In the context of disinformation, this could mean identifying vulnerabilities in a website that an attacker could exploit to deface the site with false information or redirect users to a disinformation-spreading platform.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates subdomain takeover susceptibility by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. A hijacked subdomain could host a fake news site or a phishing page that looks legitimate, spreading disinformation or collecting credentials. For instance, if
support.yourcompany.comis susceptible to takeover, an attacker could host a fraudulent support page there, disseminating false instructions or harmful software.BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG derives this susceptibility from sentiment, financial findings, domain intelligence (including domain name permutations and Web3 domains), and dark web presence. This is highly relevant to disinformation security because phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks often leverage disinformation tactics. ThreatNG can identify look-alike domains that could be used for phishing campaigns spreading false narratives to employees or customers. For example, if "https://www.google.com/search?q=yourcompanny.com" (with a double 'n') is registered, ThreatNG would flag this, preventing its use in a phishing attempt to spread disinformation about a company policy.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: This is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits, SEC filings, SEC Form 8-Ks, and Negative News), and Domain Intelligence. Disinformation campaigns are often aimed at damaging a brand's reputation. ThreatNG helps identify existing vulnerabilities that could be exploited to amplify such attacks or proactively detect negative news or sentiment that might indicate an ongoing disinformation effort. For example, if a surge in negative online sentiment appears alongside specific domain name permutations, it could signal a coordinated disinformation attack against the brand.
Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses this based on cloud and SaaS exposure, dark web presence (compromised credentials), domain intelligence, and sentiment and financials. While directly related to data breaches, leaked information, especially compromised credentials, can fuel disinformation campaigns by giving attackers access to internal systems to spread false information or legitimize fake narratives.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This rating considers certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, sensitive ports, and code secret exposure. Misconfigured certificates or exposed sensitive ports could be entry points for attackers to inject disinformation into web traffic or compromise systems that spread false information. Exposed code secrets, such as API keys, could allow attackers to manipulate official online channels.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates cloud services and SaaS solutions, factoring in compromised credentials on the dark web. Disinformation can originate from compromised cloud accounts or SaaS platforms. ThreatNG can identify unsanctioned cloud services or open, exposed cloud buckets, which malicious actors could use to host disinformation content.
ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates organizations based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations. Disinformation often targets an organization's ESG standing to damage its reputation or influence public opinion. ThreatNG's ability to identify relevant offenses helps organizations preemptively address potential areas of vulnerability to disinformation attacks.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: This is derived from Domain Intelligence (enumeration of vendor technologies from DNS and subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure. Disinformation can propagate through supply chains. ThreatNG can identify vulnerable third-party vendors or technologies that could be compromised to spread disinformation targeting the leading organization.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is calculated based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events), and sentiment and financials. While not directly about disinformation, ransomware attacks often come with a disinformation component, such as threats to leak data or spread false narratives about the victim organization. ThreatNG can identify factors increasing susceptibility to such multi-pronged attacks.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates an organization's mobile app exposure by discovering them in marketplaces and checking their contents for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. Disinformation can be spread through compromised or fake mobile applications. ThreatNG can identify legitimate apps with exposed sensitive information that attackers could use to impersonate the organization or distribute false updates. It also helps discover malicious look-alike apps.
Positive Security Indicators: ThreatNG identifies and highlights security strengths like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) from an external attacker's perspective. Knowing an organization's security strengths helps understand the defenses against disinformation attempts. For example, the presence of a WAF can help prevent website defacement, a common disinformation tactic.
Reporting ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, and U.S. SEC Filings. These reports would be invaluable for disinformation security efforts by:
Prioritization: Helping organizations prioritize security efforts and allocate resources effectively by focusing on the most critical risks that could be exploited for disinformation campaigns.
Reasoning and Recommendations: Providing context and insights into identified risks and offering practical advice on reducing them, enabling proactive measures against disinformation. For example, a report might highlight an exposed API that could be used to inject false data into an organization's public-facing application, with recommendations on how to secure it.
Comprehensive View: Offering a balanced and comprehensive view of an organization's security posture, including specific security benefits of positive measures that counter disinformation.
Continuous Monitoring ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of all organizations' external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This constant vigilance is paramount for disinformation security. As disinformation campaigns often evolve rapidly, continuous monitoring ensures that new vulnerabilities or emerging disinformation threats are identified and addressed in real time. For example, if a new look-alike domain is registered or a new social media account impersonating the organization appears, continuous monitoring would quickly flag it.
Investigation Modules ThreatNG's detailed investigation modules provide deep insights that are crucial for understanding and responding to disinformation:
Domain Overview: Provides digital presence information, including Microsoft Entra Identification and Domain Enumeration, and related SwaggerHub instances. This helps identify an organization's actual digital footprint versus any fabricated online presence.
DNS Intelligence: Offers domain record analysis (IP identification, vendors, and technology identification), domain name permutations (taken and available), and Web3 domains (taken and available). This is vital for detecting domain spoofing, typosquatting, and registering look-alike domains often used in phishing and disinformation campaigns. For instance, discovering a registered "https://www.google.com/search?q=yourcompany-news.com" can prevent a fake news site from spreading false information.
Email Intelligence: Provides email security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records), format predictions, and harvested emails. This helps to identify vulnerabilities in email systems that could be exploited for BEC or phishing attacks, spreading disinformation internally or externally. It can also detect if legitimate email addresses have been harvested for targeted disinformation.
WHOIS Intelligence: Offers WHOIS analysis and other domains owned. This can help track the ownership of suspicious domains potentially involved in disinformation efforts.
Subdomain Intelligence: Analyzes HTTP responses, header analysis, server headers, cloud hosting, website builders, e-commerce platforms, CMS, CRM, email marketing, communication and marketing, landing page builders, sales enablement, online course platforms, help desk software, knowledge base software, customer feedback platforms, code repositories, cloud hosting, API management, developer tools, documentation platforms, product management, video hosting, blogging platforms, podcast hosting, digital publishing, photo sharing, content experience, translation management, brand management, website monitoring, status communication, survey platforms, project management, subdomain takeover susceptibility, content identification (Admin Pages, APIs, Development Environments, VPNs, Empty HTTP/HTTPS Responses, HTTP/HTTPS Errors, Applications, Google Tag Managers, Javascript, Emails, Phone Numbers), Ports (IoT / OT, Industrial Control Systems, Databases, Remote Access Services), Known Vulnerabilities, and Web Application Firewall Discovery and Vendor Types. This extensive analysis helps uncover hidden assets or misconfigurations that could be compromised to spread disinformation. For example, discovering an exposed administrative panel or a vulnerable API could indicate a direct path for an attacker to inject false information onto the organization's website.
IP Intelligence: Provides IPs, Shared IPs, ASNs, Country Locations, and Private IPs. This helps track the origin of potential disinformation attacks or identify rogue servers hosting malicious content.
Certificate Intelligence: This focuses on TLS Certificates (Status, Issuers, Active, Certs without Subdomains, Subdomains without Certificates) and Associated Organizations (Domains, Certificates, and Emails), helping identify invalid or suspicious certificates that could be used for impersonation in disinformation attacks.
Code Repository Exposure: Discovers public code repositories and uncovers digital risks, including access credentials, security credentials, and configuration files. Exposed code, particularly credentials, could be used to gain access to systems and then spread disinformation. For example, exposed API keys in a public GitHub repository could allow attackers to post fake updates to an organization's official social media accounts.
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and their contents, including access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. This helps to identify vulnerabilities in legitimate mobile apps that could be exploited to push disinformation or to discover malicious look-alike apps distributing false content.
Website Control Files: Discovers
robots.txtandsecurity.txtfiles and their contents (secure directories, user directories, emails found, bug bounty programs listed, etc.). Analyzing these files can reveal unintended disclosures or misconfigurations that an attacker could leverage to understand an organization's structure and effectively target disinformation.Search Engine Attack Surface: Helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing sensitive information via search engines, such as errors, public passwords, susceptible files, and user data. This is crucial as attackers often use search engines to gather information to craft highly credible disinformation campaigns.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: It identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets. This is critical for disinformation, as attackers might use exposed cloud resources to host malicious content or launch attacks. It also evaluates SaaS implementations like Salesforce, Slack, and Zoom, which could be targets or vectors for disinformation if compromised.
Online Sharing Exposure: This detection method detects the presence of organizational entities within online code-sharing platforms like Pastebin, GitHub Gist, and Scribd. Information shared on these platforms, even if seemingly innocuous, can be pieced together by malicious actors to create convincing disinformation narratives or to find vulnerabilities.
Sentiment and Financials: This module monitors organizational lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC Filings (especially Risk and Oversight Disclosures and Form 8-Ks), and ESG Violations. It directly aids in understanding the public narrative around an organization and identifying potential triggers or vulnerabilities that disinformation campaigns could exploit. For example, a spike in "layoff chatter" could be manipulated into false narratives about the company's stability.
Archived Web Pages: This accesses archived online presence, including APIs, document files, login pages, and user names. It allows organizations to identify past exposures that could still be used to craft disinformation, such as old login pages that attackers might try to impersonate.
Dark Web Presence: Monitors organizational mentions of related people, places, or things, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials. This is relevant as the dark web is a common source of information used to craft targeted disinformation campaigns or find compromised credentials that enable such campaigns.
Technology Stack: Identifies all technologies the organization uses, including web servers, operating systems, and CMS. Knowing the technology stack helps understand potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited to spread disinformation or attribute malicious activity.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories (DarCache) provide crucial data for combating disinformation:
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web) and Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): These repositories provide real-time information on compromised credentials and dark web mentions. This is critical for disinformation security as stolen credentials can be used to gain access to legitimate accounts to spread false information, or mentions on the dark web can indicate an upcoming disinformation campaign.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracking over 70 ransomware gangs. Ransomware attacks often include a disinformation component (e.g., threats of data leaks with false accusations). This intelligence helps an organization understand the actors and their tactics.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Understanding exploitability, likelihood, and impact provides a holistic approach to managing external risks. This includes:
NVD (DarCache NVD): Offers technical characteristics and potential impact of vulnerabilities.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Provides a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of exploitation.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Identifies actively exploited vulnerabilities.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Direct links to PoC exploits accelerate understanding of vulnerability exploits. This comprehensive vulnerability intelligence helps identify weaknesses that disinformation actors could exploit to compromise systems or spread false narratives.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Offers data on Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses. This intelligence directly supports the brand damage susceptibility assessment and helps organizations identify potential pressure points that disinformation campaigns might target.
Bug Bounty Programs (DarCach Bug Bounty): Lists in-scope and out-of-scope items. This helps understand an organization's proactive security measures, which can indirectly deter or detect disinformation campaigns.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K) and Bank Identification Numbers (DarCache BIN): Provide financial and banking-related intelligence. This can be used to detect financial fraud attempts that often accompany disinformation or to identify data points that could be manipulated in disinformation campaigns.
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): Indicates the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within mobile apps. This feeds directly into the mobile app exposure assessment, helping identify vulnerabilities that could be used to push disinformation through compromised apps.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's capabilities can be enhanced by working with complementary solutions to build a comprehensive disinformation security posture:
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring and intelligence repositories can feed valuable external attack surface and digital risk data into a SIEM or SOAR platform. For example, if ThreatNG identifies a newly registered look-alike domain targeting the organization, this alert can be sent to the SIEM. A SOAR playbook could then automatically initiate actions like blocking the domain at the perimeter, alerting relevant security teams, and beginning an internal investigation. This synergy allows for automated response and correlation of external threats with internal security events.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): While ThreatNG has its intelligence repositories (DarCache), integrating with other TIPs can enrich its data. ThreatNG can provide external attack surface context to generic threat intelligence. For example, suppose a TIP identifies a new disinformation campaign tactic targeting a specific industry. In that case, ThreatNG can then specifically scan for vulnerabilities on the organization's external attack surface susceptible to that tactic. Conversely, ThreatNG's discovery of suspicious activity on the dark web or compromised credentials can be fed into a TIP to enrich its broader threat landscape view.
Brand Protection and Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Services: ThreatNG's focus on external attack surface and digital risk aligns closely with DRP. ThreatNG's ability to identify brand damage susceptibility, mobile app exposure, and online sharing exposure directly supports DRP services. For instance, if ThreatNG discovers unauthorized uses of an organization's logo on third-party sites or uncovers new mobile apps impersonating the brand, this information can be relayed to a DRP service for further enforcement actions like takedowns.
Public Relations (PR) and Communications Tools: Disinformation security is not just a technical challenge but also a communication one. ThreatNG's sentiment analysis and monitoring of social media posts can provide early warnings of emerging disinformation campaigns. This information can be directly integrated with PR and communication tools to enable rapid response and counter-messaging efforts. For example, suppose ThreatNG detects a surge in negative news mentions or social media posts containing specific keywords. In that case, the PR team can be immediately alerted to draft and disseminate factual information to mitigate the impact of disinformation.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions: ThreatNG's findings on compromised credentials from the dark web and sensitive code exposure (e.g., exposed API keys or SSH keys) are critical for enhancing IAM. If ThreatNG identifies compromised credentials, this information can trigger automated password resets or MFA enforcement policies within the IAM system. This direct link helps to prevent attackers from using stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access and spread disinformation.
Content Moderation and Fact-Checking Platforms: For organizations that host user-generated content or are concerned about the spread of disinformation through their channels, integrating ThreatNG with content moderation or third-party fact-checking services can be beneficial. While ThreatNG identifies the potential for disinformation (e.g., through vulnerable web applications or impersonated domains), these platforms can actively analyze and flag false or misleading content. ThreatNG could identify a vulnerable content management system, and once that vulnerability is addressed, a content moderation solution can then ensure the integrity of the content itself.
