Ambiguous Self-Induced Disinformation (ASID) Attacks: Weaponizing a Cognitive Deficiency

Abstract

Humans quickly and effortlessly impose narrative context onto ambiguous stimuli, as demonstrated through psychological projective testing and ambiguous figures. We suggest that this feature of human cognition may be weaponized as part of an information operation. Such Ambiguous Self-Induced Disinformation (ASID) attacks would employ the following elements: the introduction of a culturally consistent narrative, the presence of ambiguous stimuli, the motivation for hypervigilance, and a social network. ASID attacks represent a reduced-risk, low-investment on the part of the adversary with a potentially significant reward, making this a likely tactic of choice for information operators within the context of gray-zone conflicts.

Neurophysiological and emotional influences on team communication and metacognitive cyber situational awareness during a cyber engineering exercise

“…While the significance of such findings may be unclear with respect to exercise outcomes (Lund, 2022 ), the findings in the present study may serve to further elucidate their relevance beyond suggesting that individual characteristics influence team dynamics. While stress and urgency may disturb analytic cognitive processes (Poth, 2021 ), positive moods, as opposed to neutral moods may also result in transitioning from analytical processing to stimulus-oriented processing (Baek and Falk, 2018 ), for example as a result of optimism bias and mood congruent processing, lack of suspicion, or overconfidence (Vishwanath et al, 2018 ; Canham et al, 2022 ; Sütterlin et al, 2022 ). In practice, this may result in reduced situational understanding, as indicated in our study by positive moods being a significant negative predictor of both individual and team-level prospective metacognitive judgments of performance, as well as being a positive predictor of retrospective judgments of team success.…”

Neurophysiological and Emotional Influences on Team Communication and Metacognitive Cyber Situational Awareness During a Cyber Engineering Exercise

“…While the significance of such findings may be unclear with respect to exercise outcomes (Lund, 2022), the findings in present study may serve to further elucidate their relevance beyond suggesting that individual characteristics influence team dynamics. While stress and urgency may disturb analytic cognitive processes (Poth, 2021), positive moods, as opposed to neutral moods may also result in transitioning from analytical processing to stimulus-oriented processing (Baek & Falk, 2018), for example as a result of optimism bias and mood congruent processing, lack of suspicion, or overconfidence (Canham et al, 2022;Sütterlin et al, 2022;Vishwanath et al, 2016). In practice, this may result in reduced situational understanding, as indicated in our study by positive moods being a significant negative predictor of both individual and team-level prospective metacognitive judgements of performance, as well as being a positive predictor of retrospective judgements of team success.…”

A Multidimensional Cyber Defense Exercise: Emphasis on Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Aspects

“…The particular relevance of PS in the CDX context is the very nature of problems posed in cyber defense, where available information and the repertoire of technically possible countermeasures are plentiful, but the problem's nature as such remains to a high degree ambiguity. Ambiguous threats in cyber defense are characterized by a difficulty in attributing meaning to ''gray'' signals, to an increased risk of interpreting random signals as meaningful patterns, to lack of the ability to determine the outcomes and success probabilities of potential and technically feasible actions (Canham et al, 2022). Ambiguous threats are particularly prone to increase the likelihood of decision-making biases such as misinterpretations of statistical probabilities, and group think-based decision biases and other cognitive fallacies (Roberto et al, 2006).…”