Information War? (A departure from IoT)

I’m currently studying information warfare, so instead of focusing on the Internet of Things in this post I’m going to discuss an information-warfare related event that has to do with the IoT—namely, the power grid.

In late December, segments of the U.S. were thrown into consternation by an article from the Washington Post that claimed hackers had breached Vermont’s power grid. Per the original story, malware linked to Russian state hackers was found on multiple computers at a Vermont power company, and many leaders believed this could be a serious intrusion on our power grid. However, within two hours of posting the article, the ‘hacked’ power company issued a statement denying this story. Instead, they stated that one laptop that was found to contain malware—a laptop that wasn’t even connected to the power grid. In addition, while this malware was used by Russian hackers, it is also for sale on the Internet. In other words, the Washington Post described a common-place malware infection as a state-sponsored compromise of the power grid. In spite of this revelation, the Washington Post failed to fully correct their article for a number of hours, as two expository Forbes articles show. The Post also had failed to contact the power company to verify the facts until the article was already published.

Information warfare involves controlling what people read, believe, and think, and by extension how they react and respond. This can be done by destroying information (a cyberattack disrupting the Internet is a traditional example of information warfare), but it can also be done by spreading false information or tweaking the truth. In a sense, information war is a souped-up version of what advertisers and marketers do on a constant basis: controlling information to one’s own advantage.

Because of their significant ability to influence, media outlets (through TV, paper media, radio, and the Internet) are key players in information warfare. If they present information as true, then it will greatly affect regular people (the target of many information struggles). In addition, an entity that can manipulate the media gains great power in information conflicts. Consider totalitarian regimes, like the USSR, who used the media and propaganda to influence their people—and how, when external sources of information came in, these regimes crumbled. This is why the media needs to be trustworthy. If they aren’t, then they can cause many people to believe falsehoods and cause a great deal of confusion and harm.

This story shines a light on the vulnerability of big media outlets to misinformation. The Post failed to adequately verify the facts in their article. Though the results weren’t significantly damaging, they serve as a warning to the vulnerabilities in seemingly trustworthy news sources and the need to evaluate what we believe to be true. What if the next fake news article is created from misinformation designed to harm the reputation or safety of a large group of people?