Sorry: Ambient Tactical Deception Via Malware-Based Social Engineering
This addresses cybersecurity threats by enabling subtle, software-driven deception attacks that could impact individuals or groups through online manipulation.
The paper introduces Ambient Tactical Deception (ATD), a malware-based social engineering attack that manipulates text sentiment in web browsers to alter victims' perceptions of reality, potentially leading to alienation, emotional distress, or influence on opinions about elections, relationships, or corporations.
In this paper we argue, drawing from the perspectives of cybersecurity and social psychology, that Internet-based manipulation of an individual or group reality using ambient tactical deception is possible using only software and changing words in a web browser. We call this attack Ambient Tactical Deception (ATD). Ambient, in artificial intelligence, describes software that is "unobtrusive," and completely integrated into a user's life. Tactical deception is an information warfare term for the use of deception on an opposing force. We suggest that an ATD attack could change the sentiment of text in a web browser. This could alter the victim's perception of reality by providing disinformation. Within the limit of online communication, even a pause in replying to a text can affect how people perceive each other. The outcomes of an ATD attack could include alienation, upsetting a victim, and influencing their feelings about an election, a spouse, or a corporation.