Elevated
Fake
The more synthetic media is perceived to be legitimate and authoritative, the content is more likely to be trusted, persuasive, and acted upon.
Synthetic media can range from non-interactive, not ongoing, or not consistent (low) to interactive, ongoing, and consistent (high).
Synthetic media can range from very recognizable and familiar (high) or hardly (or not) recognizable and familiar (low).
Synthetic media can range from evoking a significant affective response (high) to barely or not at all eliciting an affective reaction.
Synthetic media can range from broadcast to a wide human audience or technical security measures (high) to a narrow, specific human audience or tailored technical security measure (low).
The spread of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and affect through social aggregates from one member to another
Adversaries seeking to outrage target audiences, resulting in collective mentality to mobilize into volatile engagements or damaging, violent protest
Malinformation is information or narratives based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate
Content created to serve an information or psychological operation purpose.
The tendency to seek information that confirms or supports a predetermined position or conclusion.
Tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
Information that is more readily available in memory is judged as more likely or more representative. Can be influenced by recency or emotional virulence of the memories.
Tendency to take actions consistent with the actions of others, especially those we perceive as similar to ourselves. Can be exploited by either creating a referent group or referencing a referent group.
Technique that attempts to implant a false memory in the target through suggestion.
A feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s situation or circumstances. May be leveraged by an attacker by offering a path toward resolving the source disgruntlement as a means of manipulating the target.
An attacker leverages fear to gain target compliance.
Affective responses--emotions, moods and feelings--effect cognition and perception. Media that intentionally causes a high degree of emotional load can significantly image how target audience member perceives and thinks about the subject of the media.
The Mere Exposure Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals show a preference for things they’re more familiar with. Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking and familiarity, even without conscious recognition.
Both humans and automation may be targeted by synthetic media attacks. This criteria references whether the target of the attack was human or automation. The highlighted icon represents the intended target of this submitted media.
Human
Technical
Hybrid
Unknown
A measure of if the attack was constructed by a human or by artificial intelligence. The highlighted icon represents the method of control of this submitted media.
Human
Automation
Hybrid
Unknown
The medium is the format of the content submitted. Highlighted items represent all of the various formats contained in the submitted content.
Text
Image
Video
Audio
Technical complexity of the atttack.
How damaging the attack was intended to be.
While "making pictures" there is a natural inevitability that posts with evocative media will be consumed and re-posted to cause virality, even when there is no specific intention to cause this effect. Information that false, even when made in parody or art, can quickly create a malinformation effect when consumed by others, particularly when done quickly or non-deliberatively.
Chaos injection is the intentional introduction of evocative material--which is often ambiguous and unresolved--to cause confusion and disorder.
Evoke feelings of hopelessness
Create group, organization or societal division
Instigating, eliciting or forcing the target audience to take and action that is advantageous to the deepfake threat adversary
The creator and/or disseminator of the media seeks to create political discord, argumentation and divisiveness.
Motivation is the underlying activator, purpose or sustained reasons for why the deepfake threat actor wants to create nefarious synthetic media.
A clear motivation cannot be derived from the text content of the post.
Targeting is the threat actor’s intentional selection of a target audience, or the group or individual whom he is interested in impacting with his deepfake campaign.
Audiences that are interested and following the Donald Trump criminal investigations.
Research & Reconnaissance occurs when the threat actor is effortfully gathering information about the target audience, the optimal channels to conduct their campaign on, the relevant narratives for the attack, and type of content that will have the desired impact on the target audience.
No case specific insights generated.
Preparation & Planning are the steps and processes that the threat actor takes to acquire the tools and content needed to create the deepfake media for their campaign and their deliberation for the execution of the campaign.
No case specific insights generated.
Production is the threat actor’s use of tools and content for the creation and development of deepfake media for their attack campaign.
Use of AI image generation program, MidJourney.
Narrative Testing. A narrative is a story, or an account of related events or experiences. A good narrative will have story coherence, such that both the story being told and its relationship to the real world are cohesive and clear. In deepfake campaigns, threat actors consider and evaluate the possible narratives—particularly in relation to events and context—to support the campaign in an effort to maximize the believability and efficacy of the attack.
The imagery is highly evocative, showing former President Donald Trump being arrested in a chaotic, violent way
Deployment is the threat actor’s intentional transmission of deepfake content to the target audience through selected online channels.
Deployed over "X" social media
Amplification is the threat actor’s intentional efforts to maximize the visibility, virality and target audience exposure to their deepfake content.
Reposts, shares, likes, comments and other engagement on social medai, particularly the platform of origin, "X"
Post-Campaign is the period after the target audience has received and been exposed to the deepfake content.
No case specific insights generated.
The imagery should be considered and assessed within the context of post(s) that deployed it, and in turn, re-posted from. As with any emotion-inducing media, assessing should be done slowly and not based upon reactivity. In this process the basis and premise of the media should be verified before forming an judgment, making a decision or taking action.
Notes:
Created with MidJourney