Recently we have seen the emergence new challenges to cyber security in which adversaries seek, not to simply to deny service, steal data, or utilize resources, but rather to use the network to distort information to influence opinion, thought, or action. Such Internet information manipulation is challenging in that the scale of the Internet makes it easier to influence large numbers of users, that the anonymity on the Internet makes attribution and identity hard, and that the control of information flow is distributed and highly automated allowing for easy modification of personalization and filtering algorithms. This research project proposes to study information manipulation on the Internet. Specifically, it seeks to provide evidence of manipulation and demonstrate the serious nature of the problem. The project has three parts: (1) Constructing a corpus of documented cases of Internet information manipulation, (2) An identification of various players in Internet information flow and their relationships to each other, and (3) An empirical analysis of the scope of the information flow between these players. More broadly, the work will provide data to inform techniques, and methods that with enhance a truly interdisciplinary set of fields, from the social and political sciences, to networking and distributed systems, security, information retrieval, and data mining.
EAGER: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Internet Information Manipulation