Disinformation Depot is an ongoing series exploring the latest disinformation news, tactics, and trends as they are discovered and how they relate to the 2024 U.S. election cycle. May the honest candidates win!
Cybersecurity and disinformation researchers track threats globally as new tactics, strategies, or techniques emerge everywhere. This gives us better insight into the types of attacks that can be launched against our upcoming elections. Let’s dive in.
The Black Trump Supporters That Never Were
While there is no doubt that the former president has supporters from all races and creeds, a recent series of images released by a currently unknown source that made the rounds on social media show Donald Trump with several black supporters. Unfortunately for the Trump Campaign, these were all deepfakes.
As you can see with one of the images below, there are subtle tells, such as hands or fingers being odd, the lettering on the man’s hat on the left is typical A.I. copyright avoiding gibberish, and more:
In this image, it’s apparent that the man on the right must have absorbed his conjoined twin… when he was 32 years old:
As most people don’t pay attention to the minute details, we can expect more of these tactics during the election.
The Guardian Gives Everyone A Lesson In Deepfake Audio
One of the biggest concerns in the 2024 election is the disinformation that can be created quickly, which sounds exactly like pretty much anyone. Americans, in general, simply do not follow the news like we used to and, unlike most readers of this article, can tell you what the candidates say regularly. This is where we get into trouble with Deepfake audio.
Both Trump and Biden have recognizable voices, which means a clip of one of them saying something outrageous could go viral instantly to the detriment of either man. That also means not everyone will get the fact-check memo once the news media determines it’s a fake.
The Guardian did us all a favor by shedding light on this problem via a Deepfake quiz you can take here.
Fake News Websites Are A Russian Intelligence Operation
If you’re an avid reader of the Miami Chronicle, New York News Daily, Chicago Chronicle, and DC Weekly, Vladimir Putin would like to say thanks! These “news” sites were created to sow Russian disinformation to the U.S. public and sow they did.
This disinformation campaign, which is expanding faster than sites are taken down, was so effective that Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shared a fake story from DC Weekly about Ukrainian President Zelensky purchasing two yachts with U.S. aid money. How many of their followers still think this is real and didn’t read actual news reporting on this? I’d venture to say most if not nearly all.
The U.S. Justice System Fights Back… Slowly
If you’re not familiar with “Ricky Vaughn,” then you’re probably not on the alt-right. Called “Trump’s Most Influential White Nationalist Troll,” Mr. Vaughn, whose real name is Douglass Mackey, was one of the most prolific sharers of far-right memes and disinformation during the 2016 presidential election. MIT Media Lab named him one of their top 150 influencers during the election.
This upstanding citizen was just convicted in federal court for spreading disinformation that Hillary Clinton voters could actually text in their vote via mobile phone. United States v. Mackey accused him of conspiracy to deprive people of their rights. His disinformation campaign was so effective that almost 5,000 unique phone numbers texted his fictitious vote-by-text phone number.
While Mackey is sitting out the 2024 election, it’s important to understand that while the justice system does catch up to disinformation peddlers (at least those in the United States), it has taken almost eight years to get justice. In a world of instant information delivery and constant changing threats, this is way too slow.
As the disinformation continues to escalate, now to the point where even this ongoing article series is having issues keeping up, all indicators point to this absolute onslaught of disinformation continuing to explode. Now is the time to educate everyone.
An expert in cybersecurity and network infrastructure, Nick Espinosa has consulted with clients ranging from small business owners up to Fortune 100 level companies for decades. Since the age of 7, he’s been on a first-name basis with technology, building computers and programming in multiple languages. Nick founded Windy City Networks, Inc at 19 which was acquired in 2013. In 2015 Security Fanatics, a Cybersecurity/Cyberwarfare outfit dedicated to designing custom Cyberdefense strategies for medium to enterprise corporations was launched.
Nick is a regular columnist, a member of the Forbes Technology Council, and on the Board of Advisors for both Roosevelt University & Center for Cyber and Information Security as well as the College of Arts and Sciences. He’s also the Official Spokesperson of the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition, Strategic Advisor to humanID, award-winning co-author of a bestselling book, TEDx Speaker, and President of The Foundation.
