Elevated
Real
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 video in question, although authentic, has been repurposed with the intent to cause viewers to question or believe that President Biden is homophobic.
Malinformation is information or narratives based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate
The media is intended to serve as a catalyst for political argument, discord and divisiveness.
False information purposely spread to influence public opinion or obscure the truth
Intentional strategy and tactics meant to mislead, misdirect and manipulate the perceptions of a target audience through simulation (showing the false) and/or dissimulation (hiding the real)
In assessing other people, it is the tendency for a person’s undesirable trait to be generalized to possess other poor traits.
Technique that attempts to implant a false memory in the target through suggestion.
False memory implantation is a recollection that seems real but is actually a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event by virtue of being fed untrue information about an event or experience. These memories may be entirely false and imaginary, or in some cases may contain elements of fact that have been distorted by interfering information or other memory distortions.
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.
The creator of the X posting suggesting President Biden made a homophobic slur with a alert light/siren emoji is seeking to instigate emotional reactivity to a reputation damaging post.
Create group, organization or societal division
Offering information that affects the target audience legally, morally, ideologically or in other areas
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.
While not synthetic media, aspects of the Kill Chain are relevant to dissect and discern how this false narrative was produced.
Motivation is the underlying activator, purpose or sustained reasons for why the deepfake threat actor wants to create nefarious synthetic media.
This false narrative was created to give viewers the perception and/or belief that President Biden made a homophobic remark.
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.
The target audience of this campaign is the American voting public who may be influenced by the content.
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.
Repurposing of the Harry Daniels TikTok video and re-posting it on X.
Production is the threat actor’s use of tools and content for the creation and development of deepfake media for their attack campaign.
No deepfake production tools or efforts. This is simply repurposing of the Harry Daniels TikTok video and re-posting it on X.
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 story transmitted in this short video is that President Biden callously used a homophobic slur toward a social media influencer who sang to him.
Deployment is the threat actor’s intentional transmission of deepfake content to the target audience through selected online channels.
Repurposing of a TikTok Video and posted on X with a nefarious new narrative. As of the writing of this DTIR, the post has 10.1M Views, 662 comments, 2.5K reposts, 19k likes, and 5.7K bookmarks.
Amplification is the threat actor’s intentional efforts to maximize the visibility, virality and target audience exposure to their deepfake content.
Amplification has been natively occurring in X via re-posts.
Post-Campaign is the period after the target audience has received and been exposed to the deepfake content.
Not a part of a larger campaign.
Psyber Labs encourages consumers of social media content to contextualize content before investing in veracity and narrative. When video content has watermarks of prior creators, always go to the source and origin and review the content there first. Often, as is the case with this video re-posting on X, the user has repurposed a video and shaped a nefarious false narrative with the video.