11 Feb Is Disinformation a cybersecurity threat

Is Disinformation a cybersecurity threat?

What is disinformation?

• Spreading the fake, half-truth, molded truth, and miss appropriated information,deep fakes, and cheap fakes is known as disinformation. It is an attack and compromise on a person’s cognitive being.
• It is used to manipulate societies, social engineering threats on a mass scale. e.g phishing attacks compromise IT systems where as disinformation campaigns play on emotions

What is Cybersecurity?

• When actors use attacks to compromise confidentiality, the integrity and the availability of IT systems for their benefit is known as cyber security.
• It is aimed at computer infrastructure such as computers, networks etc while disinformation exploits our inherent cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

What is cognitive hacking?

->It is a threat from disinformation and computational propaganda which try to manipulate people’s minds.
->This attack exploits

• psychological vulnerabilities
• perpetuates biases
• eventually compromises logical and critical thinking

->giving rise to cognitive dissonance.

• For e.g. storming of the U.S. Capitol
• in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Cyprus and Belgium) burned down 5G towers because they believed it caused the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Deep fakes

->Deep Fakes are synthetic or fabricated media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness

• This describes a new level of danger to disinformation campaigns.

How to Curb Disinformation:-

->Developing rigorous security frameworks, guidelines, standards, and applying the best practices such as defense-in-depth, threat modeling, secure development lifecycle, and red-team-blue-team (self-attack to find vulnerabilities to fix them) to build cybersecurity resilience.

->developing as disinformation defence systems by studying

• strategy and tactics
• identities of malicious actors
• behaviors from the cybersecurity domain to mitigate disinformation threats.

->Defense-in-depth is an information assurance strategic tool which provides multiple, redundant defensive measures if a security control fails. It identifies disinformation actors and removes them.
->Regular patching will help to eliminate vulnerabilities from the systems.
->Educating the people is the key.
->Technology industry + civil society + the government should coordinate
->public-private partnerships must also invest
->Balancing the rights of speech with the dangers provided by disinformation is a grave challenge for policymakers and regulators.

 Swarn Rajput

Furnace oil from Titanium factory spills into the sea

London Convention on Marine Pollution (LC-72 )

->the non-binding treaty which seeks to address the problem of deliberate disposal at sea
->It does not cover discharges from land-based sources such as pipes, land discharge etc.
Barcelona Convention-> covers the Mediterranean sea in marine pollution.

International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling

->IWC governs the commercial, scientific, and aboriginal subsistence whaling practices of fifty-nine member nations which are considered as threat to whale existence.
->International Whaling Commission (IWC) was set up
->active against commercial whaling. it has adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling . This ban still continues.
->Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is located in the surrounding continent of Antarctica.
->Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary

->Till now Only two such sanctuaries have been designated by International Whaling Commission

Wadden Sea Agreement

->Location of the Wadden Sea-> between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of Frisian Islands.
->It is a World Heritage site
->3 national parks around the wadden sea biodiversity area.

• Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park
• Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park
• Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park

MARPOL refers to Marine Pollution.

->India is a party to MARPOL

Swarn Rajput

Israel Wants India to be on her side in ICC.

CONTEXT:

• Israel seeks support from India against the ruling of the International Criminal Court on alleged Israel’s atrocities over the West Bank region.

Issue:

• Israel and Palestine claim sovereignty over the west bank region but Israel has the control over this region.
• Israel does not recognise the ICC jurisdiction and believes that Palestine is not a sovereign country.
• Israeli PM called the ruling of ICC “antisemitism”.

Swarn Rajput

Tragedy Softly

->Himalayas are a young fold mountain + volatile mountain system.

• Even a minor change ->can trigger landslides.

->Use of Mountains

• regulate temperatures.
• snow-covered ranges provide perennial availability of water.

->These mountain ranges are affected by changes in the climate system due to global warming.

Issues:

• DPRs (detailed project reports) of i projects-> do not include the idiosyncrasies of this mountain-climate dynamic:
• DPR does not account for the frequency of landslides, snow avalanches and lake bursts or other environmental issues.

How to solve

• Gap in DPR must be plugged swiftly
• detailed studies on projects, ecosystems should be conducted to understand the project effect on fragile ecosystems.
• research should have environmental impact assessment reports.
• Collaborative approach.

  Swarn Rajput

Guj- Panchayat constituencies reserved for SC/ST 

• Article 243-O: Bar to courts in the electoral matters related to delimitation of constituencies & election of local bodies.. 
• Some candidates file petitions in the High Court. State government stand – Court cannot interfere as per article 243-O. 
• Guj HC judgement- “Judicial review is part of the basic structure of the Constitution so Court can look into the matters related to Article-243-O as well, But court should not do ordinarily else, interfere in the election process”

Swarn Rajput

Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce

• committee, chaired by V Vijay Sai Reddy 
• Issues highlighted by committee
  • India’s poor industrial performance
  • very high logistics costs 
  • a high dependence of crucial manufacturing sectors on imports from countries like China
• Recommendation
  • implementation of the reforms such as pharmaceutical parks etc through seamless coordination between various Ministries

Swarn Rajput

India’s fastest highway 

• It is under-construction, Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway.

• It will have 5 wildlife bridges.
• Some part of the highway is located r between the Bor Tiger Reserve and the Umred-Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary.

Three wildlife sanctuaries in maharashtra:

• Tansa (Thane)
• Katepurna (Akola-Washim border)
• Karanja-Sohol (Washim

Swarn Rajput

Swarn Singh

Plutus IAS Current Affair Team Member