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The age of digital deception: tracking disinformation and malvertising in deepfake advertising

ABSTRACT

The era of post-truth and fake news is defined by the use of cyber influence operations through hybrid tactics to alter people’s mindsets, clarity of judgement by reshaping their perceptions of reality and influencing decision-making processes. The effects of these operations extend from destabilising democracy to undermining social cohesion and eroding trust in government authority. All of this is achieved through the use of technological hacking in the pursuit of cognitive manipulation, disrupting the most vital infrastructure of any nation – the human mind.

This paper exposes the manipulation of online profit-making technology to damage national reputation by combining hostile information with online advertising to target the most vulnerable users. Through an analysis of 11 Google ads identified over a three-month period in the Romanian digital landscape, it reveals a persistent malicious threat that combines deepfake images and fake news tactics in fake sponsored ads to attract user engagement. It also identifies compromised websites that redirect users to malicious websites, fake news sites used for phishing or even infected with malware.

The findings will reveal new techniques used in cognitive hacking, help understand the effectiveness of advertising reports in the context of the European Union’s Digital Services Act, and serve as the basis for extensive research by tracking disinformation and malvertising to counter FIMI operations in a hybrid approach based on communications and cybersecurity expertise. The results are also relevant to the ongoing dilemma of classifying fake advertising as either cybercrime fraud or cognitive warfare influence operations.

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This is a sample chapter from my PhD research, which is available in Public Communication and Challenges in the Current Digital Environment, a volume based on the work presented by scholars and researchers at the 3rd International Graduate Conference in Communication, held at SNSPA in Bucharest, Romania, on 15–16 June 2023 – https://edituracomunicare.ro/carti/colectii/in-afara-colectiilor/public-communication-and-challenges-in-the-current-digital-environment-649.html

Cover illustration of the book 'Public communication and challenges in the current digital environment' featuring an abstract digital design with devices and data visualizations.

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