Information warfare technologies on the Internet

Author: Nezhdanov Igor Yuryevich

"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Table of contents
Information warfare technologies on the Internet ................................................................................1

Instead of a preface ...............................................................................................................................5

What is an "information war"?" ..............................................................................................5

Global trends ........................................................................................................................... 6

Activity of special services in the field of information wars. ......................................................... 6

US...................................................................................................................................................7
United Kingdom ............................................................................................................................18

In other countries ............................................................................................................................18

Information warfare goals.........................................................................................................19

Basic ........................................................................................................................................19

How is this solved............................................................................................................................20

Basics of Information Warfare ....................................................................................................21

Sequence of aggressor's steps.........................................................................................21

Psi effects...................................................................................................................................25
Technological effects ............................................................................................................28

Information warfare techniques...............................................................................................29 Virtual

personalities (surrogates) .............................................................................................41 Features
of information warfare in Russia in the internet..............................................................................43

Anonymity..................................................................................................................................44
TOP lists .....................................................................................................................................45

Infofield monitoring..................................................................................................................46
Willingness to respond ......................................................................................................48

Counteraction strategy..................................................................................................................48

Sequence of actions.........................................................................................................48

What to do and why......................................................................................................................48

Start monitoring........................................................................................................................ 49

Install the aggressor .................................................................................................................... 51

Understand the enemy's

forces..............................................................................................................51 Develop it action plan........................
Official requests ............................................................................................................51 How
to understand war or not .................................................................................................................52

Signs of preparing for war ......................................................................................................53

Signs of the outbreak of war................................................................................................................54
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Counteraction techniques....................................................................................................................57
Discrediting ..................................................................................................................................57

Disclosure of compromising material .......................................................................................................58

Publishing virtual compromising material ............................................................................... 58

Negative praise.......................................................................................................................58
Destruction of virtual concepts ..............................................................................................58

Not motivated booing..............................................................................................58

Public outrage .........................................................................................................58

Blurring the negative............................................................................................................................58

A distraction.........................................................................................................................................58

Diverting your opponent's resources to another war. ...................................................................58

Diverting the audience to a new sensation. ..............................................................................59

Distraction from an insignificant fact in the context of the current problem ...................................59

Driving it to the point of absurdity......................................................................................................................59

Working on the map item's image ..........................................................................................................60

Creating texts .........................................................................................................................60

Principles...........................................................................................................................................60

Brevity........................................................................................................................................60
Reliability ...............................................................................................................................60

Humor ..............................................................................................................................................61

Severity....................................................................................................................................61
Messages (thoughts).............................................................................................................................61

Key words:.............................................................................................................................61
Insults ..................................................................................................................................61

Excuses....................................................................................................................................61
Composure ................................................................................................................................61

Visualization .................................................................................................................................62

Content generation techniques............................................................................................................62

Autogeneration...............................................................................................................................62
Generating pseudo-unique content ....................................................................................62 Mirroring.............................
Methods
of dissemination of information.............................................................................................63

"Direct" distribution methods.............................................................................................63

Blogs...............................................................................................................................................63
Compromising material sites........................................................................................................................65
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Clone sites..................................................................................................................................65
Fake sites.............................................................................................................................65
Comments to articles ......................................................................................................................65

Forums...........................................................................................................................................65 Guest
books...............................................................................................................................66 Publication
Services.....................................................................................................................66 Bookmark
Services..........................................................................................................................66 Photo
hosting sites .................................................................................................................................66

SMM Services.....................................................................................................................................67

Exchanges .............................................................................................................................................67

Cross-posting..................................................................................................................................68
Account management services.................................................................................................68
Bots ................................................................................................................................................ 68

Technical issues............................................................................................................................68
SEO optimization ...............................................................................................................................68

Rise to the top of search engines for positive information about yourself ..............................................

Squeezing negative information about yourself out of the TOP search results.............................................
Getting to the top of negative content about your opponent in search engines......................................
Squeezing out positive information about your opponent from TOP search engines....................................
Technical techniques (Twitter, blogs, forums...) ......................................................................72

Distribution of the material ............................................................................................................73

"Seeding" ..........................................................................................................................................73

"An authoritative source. "...........................................................................................................73

"Communication" between two nicknames .................................................................................................................74

Virtual identity...................................................................................................................74
List of used information references ...........................................................................................75

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Instead of a preface
Information warfare is a long-standing technology for achieving your goals. They
are present in one form or another in human society for a very long time, perhaps from the
moment when a person learned to speak. At various times, rumors,newspapers,
leaflets, books, movies, radio, and television were used as part of information wars… Virtually all
information dissemination media (iskusBy the way, this is also the case). But at the turn of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Internet appeared-an environment designed for
manipulating information (its creation, modification, distribution and consumption). The Internet
is based on information, and it is best suited for manipulating it. It is for this reason that with the
advent of the Internet , information wars have moved to a new qualitative level. It was the
Internet that made information wars easy to implement (fast, cheap, and without borders).
It is this symbiosis that will be discussed - how information wars are carried out on the
Internet. But not from the point of view of general arguments about good and evil, and not from
the point of view of strategies (as in the joke about the owl and mice), but about the
technological component. Remember how the mice came to the owl for advice: "everyone is
hurting us - how can we solve this problem?". To which the owl recommended that they become
hedgehogs. And to the question "how to implement it?" I answered it: "I do not know - I am a
strategist." About what and how is being done on the Internet to influence people (manipulate
them). About what services and technical solutions exist that can be used in countering
information wars. But first you need to understand what an information war is.

What is an "information war"?

Currently, there are two most common definitions of information warfare:
1) Influencing the civilian population and / or military personnel of another State by
spreading certain information. The term "information and psychological warfare"
was borrowed from the dictionary of the US military circles. The translation of this term
("information and psychological warfare") from English can sound both as "information
warfare" and as "information, psychological warfare", depending on Conteksta
of a specific official document or scientific publication. In this sense
, the term psychological warfare is also used - psychological influence on the civilian
population and / or military personnel of another state in order to achieve political or
purely military goals.
2) Purposeful actions taken to achieve information superiority by causing damage to
the information, information processes and information systems of the enemy while simultaneously
protecting their own information, information processes and information systems.
It is clear that this is an impact on people, and an impact on their opinion about something.
For example, on the opinion about the existing structure of their state, on the opinion
about the effectiveness of the government of their states, on their attitude to their own
Homeland (if we talk about information wars on a planetary scale). Or the opinion of people
about the corruption of members of a particular party, their connection with crime (if we talk
about information wars between different political forces within the country). Or on the opinion
of the company's customers about the quality of the company's products (if we are talking
about information wars in business). In this sense, the concepts of"information warfare"
and "reputation management" are very close. To put it another way, information warfare
is the formation of people's opinions about something or someone, and through such
formation - managing the actions of these people-manipulating them. In fact, this
is the ultimate goal of information warfare-managing people's actions.
If we speak in terms of war, then information war is an impact
on the enemy through information with destructive goals. This concept is very broad and in
our age of informatization inclit includes a lot of things. But all these methods, technologies
and techniques are united by the goal (destructive impact on the enemy) and that,

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

by means of which this influence is carried out (information). In the West, information
wars are commonly referred to as cyber-warfare.
Destructive influence on the enemy is anything, but the main thing is to harm
the enemy. The maximum is complete destruction, and the minimum is damage to infrastructure,
damage to the economy, creating problems in public administration, etc.At least a minimal
problem- for example, a delay in transmitting a command. It seems like nothing, but not in the
case of critical systems. For example, in a nuclear power plant, of which there are many, or in the
combat control system of a warship, or in the missile attack warning system… In critical
systems, such a small amount can be fatal. And the delay in transmitting a command can
be organized in different ways: increase the reaction time or move the timer back a little, or
create a little doubt in the mind of the courier or secretary, or even better, the clerk who
broadcasts such a command… He can also modify it. There are very different ways to
carry out a destructive effect on the enemy.
But there is some ambivalent interpretation of the concepts of "information" and"cyber". The fact
is that for the layman the concept of "virus", "Trojan", etc.is more understandable. Apparently,
due to their more frequent and long-standing use. Everyone knows that this is bad, that it is
illegal, that it is harmful. Therefore, you can speculate about this without even really
understanding the subject. Quite another thing is the psychological impact on a person through
information, and even with the use of the Internet as a means of delivery. This is also
informationThis is a war. We can talk about expanding the concept of "information warfare" -
Trojans, viruses and other malware, because this is also an information war. In fact, this is an
impact on the decision-making infrastructure (the interpretation proposed by Alexander Tokarenko)
in order to destroy it or disrupt its operation. This decision-making structure also includes a person
as a source of information, an element of its processing, transmission, and use (including for
decision-making). Based on this, you can more clearly outline the area that will be discussed later.
This is the impact on a person using information, using Internet technologies, in order
to manipulate them.
Global trends
On the Internet in general and in social networks in particular, there are more and more people,
and an active people-those who crave action, and are not content with contemplation. Or those
who in real life are nothing of themselves, and on the Internet, hoping for anonymity, begins to
behave like a collective farm gopnik. In addition, on the Internet, anyone can become a distributor
of information ("like" a journalist), and information is distributed extremely quickly, and the
borders of states do not interfere with this. Moreover, on the Internet, you can create
an illusion of any scale and focused on any social groups (countries,regions,
organizations...) at minimal cost. Including an illusion that is both negative and positive in relation
to anyone . And this is already manipulating users at the level of their fundamental concepts
of "good and evil", "what is good and what is bad". On the other hand, the age-old struggle
for resources and sales markets (in politics, for the electorate) is only getting tougher. What
makes you look for new tools of influence. So many powerful people have turned their attention to
this effective, cheap and affordable tool.
Activity of special services in the field of information wars.
States cannot ignore the existence of such an instrument. And both from the point of view of its
use, and from the point of view of protection against it. A number of countries have adopted
decisions at the state level on the use of the Internet (social networks) in the interests of these
countries (USA, Great Britain, China, India, France, Germany). As part of these decisions, social
networks are actively involved in both collecting information (passive and active) and organizing
active events (manipulating public opinion). At the same time, systems are being developed
that make it possible to automate as much as possible the process of collecting and analyzing
information, and the process of its distribution, and therefore the conduct of information wars. And
the technologies of influence via the Internet are no longer being tested, but are actively used.

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USA
The United States, as the creator country of the Internet, is currently the leader in the race
of cyber weapons. Government agencies have long been actively "mastering" social
networks, including. For this research and for developing solutions in the United States, the
capabilities of several organizations are used - DARPA, IARPA and ARL. Moreover, in recent
years, their work has shown a pronounced tendency to research and develop new
technologies for social interactions in networks where people, texts, images, and computer
devices are nodes. In other words, these three respected organizations are putting their best
efforts into developing technologies to study how people interact with each other through
online data exchange . Within the framework of this trend, solutions are being developed
regarding: -Cognitive and social network psychology;
- Neuro-network interaction;
- Functioning of networks and intelligent agents.
Work is underway in several areas at once. To be more precise, they are almost completed in
a number of areas and the results are being used. At the legal level security forces, relying on
the adopted amendments to the laws, have almost "direct" access to the servers of social
networks. Only in 2012, the US House of Representatives passed several laws and amendments
related to cyber security at once: The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2011,
H. R. 2096, Advancing America's Networking and
Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012,
H. R. 3834, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act H. R. 3523 protection of intelligence information in the field
of cyber security), Federal Information Security Amendments Act H. R. 4257
(Amendments to the Federal Information Security Act).
At the technical level An infrastructure has been created - information storage and
processing centers, where data with a depth of at least three years is archived and supercomputers with
significant operating speeds are installed. Moreover, there are processing centers both at the
federal level (interdepartmental) and at the local level (departmental). New technologies
for processing large amounts of data and extracting knowledge are being developed.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

At the technological level solutions are being developed to automate not only
monitoring, but also the preparation and implementation of active events on the Internet. In
2012 , DARPA (the coordinator of developments in this area) plans to spend a total
of $ 208 million on cyber technologies.This is an increase from 120 million euros in 2011.
In general , DARPA allocated $ 1.54 billion for the strategy to create funds for information
warfare, cyber attacks and protection against them for 2013-2017. See details below.
At the organizational level In 2006, the IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research
Projects Activity) was created - an Agency for Advanced Intelligence Research
Projects within the US Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) - an even more
closed organization that conducts research in the interests of intelligence. Its goal is to
become the vanguard of the vanguard of promising and breakthrough IT
developments. Its main principle is to develop something that you can perfectly do
without today, but in the future it will become very critical. Main areas of work:
- a radical increase in the return on information collected (analysis, use
of information);
- search for methods of artificial insights and intuitive insights into the essence of what
is contained in the collected information (again, analysis technologies);
- development of technologies to counter new opportunities of opponents on the
Internet. DARPA
DARPA (English Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for developing
new technologies for use in the armed forces. The mission of DARPA is to preserve
the technological superiority of the US armed forces, prevent the sudden
appearance of new technical means of armed struggle for the United States, support
breakthrough research, and bridge the gap between basic research and their
application in the military sphere. (Wikipedia)

DARPA has developed and is developing a whole "family" of projects directly or indirectly
related to the conduct of information and psychological wars.
Terrorism Information Awareness - TIA
In 2001, DARPA launched the Terrorism Information Awareness ( TIA) project,which
consists of creating and testing a prototype system that allows, based on large amounts
of unrelated information in various databases (including in social networks), to identify
a group of people preparing to commit a terrorist act on the territory of the Russian
Federation. US$. The project has been successfully implemented and is being developed.
And now it has become the foundation for further developments in the field of data analysis
from open sources ( including from the Internet). The created system includes several
subsystems: translation from foreign languages to English and back, detection of hidden
data, identification of implicit connections, pattern recognition, corporate analysis of information
for decision-making. Based on statistical analysis of information from databases
and the Internet, the system determines correlations (relationships) of such seemingly
random and unrelated events as: booking tickets, applying for visas, obtaining a driver's
license, booking hotel rooms, buying chemicals and explosives, purchasing firearms

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weapons and other suspicious activities, including known terrorist acts. According
to pre-determined intelligence signs, potentially dangerous events and/or
sequences of events are determined, which are given to in-depth research.
Machine Reading Program
In 2009, DARPA launched the "Machine Reading Program" project. The goal
of the program is to create an automated system for reading and understanding
natural language texts that can extract the required information from the text without
human intervention. The project was initiated byIt is designed to develop "Terrorism

Information Awareness" (TIA). The project is led by David Ferrucci,

Head of the Semantic Analysis and Synthesis Department at the IBM Research Center
. Watson.
Integrated Crisis Warning System
In 2010, the Integrated Crisis Warning System (ICEWS) program was launched -
an integrated information system for early warning of crisis situations.
The ICEWS system is designed to monitor, evaluate and highlight the main indicators
that indicate an increase in social tension in society. The main source
of information for the system is social networks. For the implementation of the program in
2010-2011 , $ 19 million was spent. In 2012, it was planned to spend about $ 5.3 million for
purposes. Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales
Since 2010, the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales program has been developed, which
is designed to identify abnormal processes occurring in society, monitor the
inappropriate behavior of individuals and groups of people. Once again
, social networks are the main object of surveillance. $22.5 million was allocated for the
implementation of the program in 2011-2012. Math for Social Networks
In 2011, DARPA launched a new program, Math for Social Networks, which aims
to develop new mathematical methods for analyzing social networks with real
-time connections that indicate changes in the real world. The
program included the creation of an extended theory of network modeling, which includes
performing space-time analysis; studying the impact of changes in networks on
objects whose behavior can be modeled.
These mechanisms for monitoring social networks using tools for analyzing
spatio-temporal relationships and content allow us to solve two main tasks::
predict the emergence of undesirable events and identify individuals and
hostile groups suspected of preparing terrorist attacks.
Plan X
In 2012, DARPA launched a program codenamed "Plan X". According
to the official document, the goal of the Plan X project is "to create revolutionary
technologies that will allow us to understand, plan and manage information warfare in
real time, on a large scale, in dynamic network infrastructures." This
includes cyberwarfare (causing damage to programs and equipment) and information
warfare (manipulating people). The project is designed for 5 years. The project budget is $

110 million. This particular project is planned to be the main (generalizing) one among the
"related" projects related to passive and active use of cybernetic space.
Automatic dossier
In June 2012, by order of DARPA, the military contractor Raytheon BBN Technologies
created a computer system that automatically compiles dossiers on citizens and organizations,
collecting information from open sources (social networks, forums, chats, blogs).

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

In addition to working on direct references to an object, the system

identifies the subject by indirect signs, connections, images (photos and
videos), and voice (radio). The system can operate at three levels of
heuristics. The launch of the system in "combat" mode was scheduled for
February 2013. We had more than one opportunity to make sure that the
system was working. And it works quite efficiently. Prototypes of such a
system were also created by SRI International and IBM. Related Projects
Projects related to social media research or involved in them in whole
or in part. ICArUS-Integrated Neural Networko-cognitive
architecture for understanding the meaning of texts. "Bailing
out" was washed out of the texts. KDD - Discovery and dissemination
of knowledge. This is also "scooping out" meaning, but meaning
that is applicable to solving specific problems. SCIL - Socio-cultural
content of the language. Identification of national, social, and cultural
characteristics of a native speaker from texts. TRUST - Means for
checking the reliability of messages. In fact, this is a technology for matching
and joining data, but it is automated and does not require human
participation. Reynard - Extracting valuable information from social networks
and virtual worlds. Also "scooping out" meanings, but in this case the meanings
are quite specific, indicated by the operator.

IARPA
IARPA The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is a research agency in the United
States that is subordinate to the Director of National Intelligence of the United States. IARPA was
created in 2006 as a counterpart to DARPA to perform scientific research for the U.S. intelligence
community (at least 16 government agencies involved in intelligence) by combining the
NSA's Disruptive Technology Office (formerly known as Advanced Research and Development).

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Development Activity) , the National Technology Alliance from NGIA, and

the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center from the CIA. (Wikipedia)

"Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity"

IARPA has established the Social Cognitive Network
Academic Research Center (SCNARC). This center is tasked with practical
testing of the developed theoretical models of scale-free networks on large volumes
of real data. The research
center Composite Networks: Understand, Predict, and Influence of studying human-machine
networks was created. Within the framework of this megaproject, the "Alliance of
Collaborative Network Technologies" was created.The Network Science Collaborative
Technology Alliance (NS CTA), founded by ARL, a number of other government agencies,
and a consortium of four research centers: SCNARC, the Center for Information Network
Research INARC, the Center for Communication Network Research CNARC, and the Center
for Transdisciplinary Network Research IRC. The task of each of these centers and the entire
alliance is to break through the capabilities of people and computers working in a single
network. In addition, IARPA conducts smaller but important social
media-related research:
Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE)

Aggregate assessment of the collective mind is a technology for studying social groups
in order to understand how ideas are formed, developed, disseminated, and how they can
influence the collective mind.
An additional goal of the program is to find opportunities to significantly improve the accuracy
and timeliness of forecasts for a wide range of event types by aggregating
the judgments of many intelligence analysts.
The program is designed to work in the following areas:
- effective identification of judgments on a variety of issues.
- accounting for judgments based on facts and unsubstantiated judgments.
- statistical analysis of the set of judgments on the problem.
- convenient presentation of aggregated forecasts.
Metaphor
Discovering and structuring cultural traditions through the study of the meaning of
metaphors, through the features of language, through the features of communication. Identification of the
main beliefs and worldviews of representatives of the studied culture based on this.

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In the first stage of the two-phase program, performers will develop

automated tools and methods for speech recognition, identification,
etc.identification of language metaphors. In the second phase, the program
will need to identify various cultural perspectives that are of interest to the
intelligence community and suggest ways to use them.
FUSE
Detection of future scientific breakthroughs by identifying increased interest in
the topic, the disappearance of the topic, non-standard solutions, unusual
research, etc. Sirius
Using game practices to identify and manage cognitive biases,
to develop skills, and to form stable psychotypes.

The Pentagon
The Pentagon (from the Greek πεντάγωνον - "pentagon") is the headquarters of the United
States Department of Defense, which has the shape of a regular pentagon. Located in the state of
Virginia near Washington (postal address: Arlington, Virginia 22202, USA). As a symbol of the US
military, "Pentagon" often means the US Department of Defense metonymically. (Wikipedia)

In 2010, the United U.S. Cyber Command was established in its current form
. The JCC also included two Pentagon structures that already existed at that time
- the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations (

JTF-GNO) and the Joint Functional Component Command

-Network Warfare (JFCC - NW). The JCC is headquartered in
Fort Meade, Maryland, and is organizationally part of the US Strategic Command.
The US Cyber Command Joint Operations Center ( USCYBERCOM JOC), located
in the new territory in the Fort Meade area, received the code name "Object-M"
(Site-M). The area of 19,000 sq. m. the cost of the object is $ 119 million. In
its activities, the JCC is guided by the document of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US
Armed Forces entitled "The Doctrine of conducting information operations".Joint
doctrin of infomation operations, and the JP 3-13 "Information Operations"
manual, in which all the provisions of the doctrine are brought into line
with the requirements of modern conditions. It is the competence of the JCC that
also includes information wars. In 2010 The Pentagon evaluated the Surrogate
Subjugation project (developed by Visual Purple), which provides for the creation
of a system for automated monitoring of social networks, chats and thematic
forums and active work on them in order to exert the necessary influence on the
audience. The system creates a virtual copy of a person (a so-called "surrogate")

participating in online discussions on a particular topic. In each specific case

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

In this case, when registering a "surrogate" on the forums, his profile indicates a specially
selected biographical legend, political and economic views, as well as a range of
interests and hobbies. All this information is intended to have a certain impact on the
attitude of participants in Internet communication to the "surrogate" and his statements,
as well as to influence the semantic nature and political coloring of the generated responses
and comments. Since the beginning of 2011, the Pentagon has been developing the
SMISC (Social Media in Strategic Communication ) system, which tracks all
political discussions and determines whether this is an accidental product of the collective
mind or a propaganda operation by a hostile nation or group. The project
is unique in that it aims to make a revolutionary breakthrough in the use of network
technologies to control and manage society. The announcement of applications for
participation in the project explicitly states that no evolutionary methods, algorithms, or
models should be presented. Only revolutionary ones.
The project is designed for approximately three years. Contractors will receive a total of
about $42 million. The Pentagon directives state that "the algorithms of such programs
are aimed at identifying and tracking the formation, development and dissemination of
ideas and concepts (memes) in social networks, which will allow you to independently
and deliberately initiate propaganda campaigns in the future, depending on the goal,
region and interests of the United States" The stated goals of the project, according to the
original description, are as follows: - detect, classify, measure and track: a) the formation
of ideas and concepts (memes); b) the targeted dissemination of messages and
misinformation; -recognizing the structures of propaganda campaigns and influence
operations on social media sites and communities;
- identifying participants and their intentions, measuring the effect of influence campaigns;
-countering hostile influence campaigns with counter-messages.
In fact, SMISC can quickly flag rumors and emerging topics in social media, figure out
who and what is behind it, and build a counteraction. SMISC is able to understand
whether this is a random product of the collective mind or a propaganda operation by a
hostile nation or group. Once SMISC detects that an influence operation has been
launched, it helps fight it by sending counter-messages. Or run manipulative
processes yourself.
The list of technologies that are present in the system is outlined: linguistic analysis,
recognition of information patterns, analysis of trends, moods, public opinion
and "cultural narratives", graph theory, automatic content creation, bots,
crowdsourcing. The system
has already been used to a limited extent in Arab forums and social networks to organize
the"Arab Spring" and to further coordinate the actions of the opposition.
In the interests of the Pentagon , the Broadcast Monitoring System (BMS)and the Internet
(Web Monitoring System - WMS) developed by specialists of BBN Technologies(BBN)
are used. The BMS system provides automatic information processing
capabilities in English, Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin Chinese , and Spanish. At the same time,
search queries can be generated in English or in the original language. The WMS system
provides the ability to monitor web resources in 75 languages of the world and is used,
among other things, by the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), US Central
Command (CENTCOM) and the Special Operations Command in the Pacific (SOCPAC).

Unified control center for the Internet information space based on WMS in

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

The headquarters of these three commands is located at SOCOM's headquarters

at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. Along with the processing of information content
, an analysis of the popularity, structure and program part of the Internet resource is
also performed. As a result, abstracts of the content of websites are created in
electronic form, as well as weekly reviews of blogs, forums, and Internet chats.
These materials are posted on the closed SOCOM portal dedicated to the
problems of conducting information wars (SOCOM IW Portal), and the closed
resource of the US intelligence community (Intellipedia). Access to them is possible from the
secure networks of the Pentagon and the intelligence community. The Pentagon
considers increasing the functionality of the unified monitoring system to be a
promising area of interaction with BBN Technologies FMMS (Foreign Media
Monitoring System), which provides processing of data obtained during
simultaneous monitoring of TV and radio broadcasting channels and web
resources. The US Air Force has begun preparing a comprehensive program called
CWOC (Cyberspace Warfare Operations Capabilities) - "Capabilities for conducting
military operations in cyberspace." The project's tender documents state that the
US Air Force wants to be able to "destroy, weaken, disrupt, mislead, distort and
hijack" enemy computer networks and control centers. The document,in particular,
refers to "disabling, including through DDoS attacks, infection and hacking
of operating systems, servers and other network devices of the enemy, "as well
as"establishing temporary control over cyberspace." The amount allocated for the
project is $10 million. The NSA
The National Security Agency of the United States (NSA) is a radio
and electronic intelligence division of the United States Department of Defense,
which is part of the Intelligence Community as an independent intelligence agency.
Formed as part of the U.S. Department of Defense on November 4, 1952. In terms
of the number of military and civilian employees and the size of the budget, it is
the largest intelligence agency in the United States. (Wikipedia)

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is building the largest data warehouse to
date in the Utah desert. The so-called "Utah Data Center" will be the last missing element
in a colossal complex of distributed information storage and processing (in addition
to the already operational supercomputer clusters of the NSA headquarters Fort Meade
(Maryland), the Oak Ridge cryptanalytic research Center (Tennessee), data-center
Lecland in San Antonio (Texas)). One of the most powerful supercomputers in the world is
also installed there (in Utah). The peak performance of this supercomputer network is still
kept secret, but experts estimate that it will be at least 50 petaflops (10 * * 15 floating-point
operations per second) - estimates are based on the power capacity of the complex,
the capacity of the cooling system and the number of maintenance personnel. The
property area is 2.3 hectares. The two-billion-dollar First Intelligence Community
Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center project is being created for

14
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

storage and processing of digital data collected as a result of surveillance:

Internet traffic, video from surveillance cameras, phone records, etc.
According to experts, the NSA data center will be able to store and process
yottabytes of information. End-to-end monitoring of email and phone call traffic
has been available in the United States for several years . The work is
being carried out as part of the NSA's Stellar Wind project, as well as by the
FBI's counterterrorism unit and other law enforcement agencies as part of
the Threat and Local Observation Database (TALON) system. The CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an agency of the Federal Government
of the United States, whose main function is to collect and analyze information
about the activities of foreign organizations and citizens. The main body of
US foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. The activities of the CIA can be
associated with the possibility of its official non-recognition. (Wikipedia)

The CIA's Open Source Center, which is unofficially called "Vengeful

librarians," conducts constant monitoring of foreign social networks, portals,

and media outlets, and creates a daily report for the White House.th
House. The Center was established in 2001. Currently, the CIA's
investment arm, In-Q-Tel, is funding a startup called Visible Technologies, which is
developing a system for monitoring blogs and social sites on the Web. The
development of" Visible Technologies " allows you to monitor more than half
a million different sites every day, checking blog posts, as well as
comments on forums and services Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.
However, today the Visible Technologies technology is not adapted for
monitoring popular "closed" social networks, such as Facebook. DHS

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)" to help counter

future terrorist attacks on the United States and around the world
" initiated the creation of a National Visualization and Analytics Center
based on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory(PNNL).
15
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Center (NVAC)). Later, the search for new approaches in the field of "visual

analytics" in the United States was coordinated by the Visual Analytics Community
(VAC), which became a"platform" for creating big data analysis systems (including

social network data). In 2009, employees of the South-East Regional Visualization and
Analytics Center (SRVAC) announced the development of a software package
specifically designed for multimedia analysis of broadcast channels in different
languages. In 2010, PNLL announced the creation of " a suite of visual analytics tools
that combines state-of-the-art technologies for defining multimedia
data characteristics, searching, filtering, and classifying, and provides end
users with a holistic approach to identifying and discovering relationships in
the multimedia space."tve".
In 2011, PNLL lab staff noted two developments:
the IN-SPIRE software package and the Starlight visual analysis environment.
IN-SPIRE is designed for analyzing large collections of unstructured text documents
and visualizing its results. The Starlight Visual Analysis environment is a visual
analysis platform that allows users to interactively switch between
different representations of information, for example, simultaneously work with
temporal, geospatial, network, and other display forms.
VACCINE
Visual Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability Environments Center
(VACCINE) - " Visual Analytics Center for Command, Control, and Interoperability
Environments". The main task of the center is to " create methods and tools for
analyzing and managing large amounts of information in all areas of internal
security activities." This also applies to the analysis of social network data.
Project "Visual Analytics for
Investigative Analysis on Text Documents". The developed visual analytical system
is able to find and process text documents with geographical references,
identify information of interest, display information using an interactive
interface, enter information developed by the analyst in interactive mode, and
immediately bring the information into line with the newly entered data. The project
"Multimedia Visual Analytics for Investigative Analysis" (Multimedia Visual Analytics
for Investigative Analysis). Within the framework of this project, a comprehensive
system for comprehensive visual analysis of multimedia data is being developed,
which forms " event streams" or "event clusters". Each thread or claThe eraser
"starts" with some significant event (for example, an appearance at a certain time
in a given place), which is then followed by a stream of related text blocks and
subsequent events. The FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an American agency under the United
States Department of Justice, reporting to the Attorney General. It was founded in 1908.

It is part of the US Intelligence Community. It has the authority to investigate violations

of the federal legislation of the country and ensure the security of the state, the country,
the nation and the president. It is known to US citizens as the structure that conducts a
general review of those who have applied for admission to the civil service. At least
200 categories of federal crimes fall under the general jurisdiction of the FBI. (Wikipedia)

16
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has long been monitoring the
communication of users of social networks Facebook, Twitter, etc. and the Skype
service in order to detect persons involved in the exchange of insider information.
In January 2012, the FBI announced that it was looking for contractors to create a
program that would provide information about possible domestic and global threats
in certain regions of the world based on data from social networks.
According to the tender announcement, the program should collect information from
"open sources" and be able to:
- Provide automated search and filtering of information from social networks,
including Facebook and Twitter.
- Allow search for new keywords.
- Display different threat levels on geographical maps, possibly using
color coding to indicate the priority of threats. Preferably using
Google 3D and Yahoo Maps.
- Preduview a wide range of data on terrorism, both in the United States and around
the world. - Translate tweets from foreign languages to English.
Google
Investment units of the Internet giant Google and the CIA have invested money in a
company that develops a program for monitoring Network content in real time. This
company is called Recorded Future, and its software analyzes thousands of
websites, blogs, and Twitter accounts every day,finding connections between
various people, organizations, events, and incidents-both past and possible in the
future. The " time analytics engine" of the program can "go beyond the search",
revealing invisible links between documents that refer to the same or similar
organizations and events. The key function of this program is to analyze the collected
information in order to determine the persons involved in a particular event and
the locations of the incident. Recorded Future technology is able to distinguish
individual people, places and events mentioned by them from information on
websites. After that, the program examines where and when these activities or
events occur ("spatial and temporal analysis"), and also determines the tone of this
document. Further, special artificial intelligence algorithms are used to establish
interesting connections between different players. To date , Recorded Future has an
index of more than 100 million events, which is stored on Amazon's servers.

17
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Experts note that Recorded Future will undoubtedly be able to use its software for early
detection of various possible events and trends and for predicting events.
In addition, the Google X laboratory is working on creating artificial intelligence for
autosomatization of communication in social networks (read: to automate active events on
the Internet).
Great Britain
British Intelligence Service GCHQ it has been using a tracking program since 2008 Optic Nerve.
In addition to the already familiar control of communication in social networks or email
messages, Optic Nerve allows you to intercept video and text from Yahoo user chats
, Xbox 360 video chats, and traffic from webcams. There is also the Tempora program,
which makes it possible to connect to fiber-optic cables responsible for transmitting Internet
traffic to and from the UK. But after the scandals
of 2013 related to the disclosure of information about the surveillance program, the
government of Foggy Albion began to actively legalize the possibility of spying on citizens.
So, the government of the Kingdom has secured the right to intercept communications
in social networks whose servers are located in the United Kingdom or the United States.

In other countries
In other countries, they are also well aware of the threats in this area, and
the opportunities they receive, and therefore they are also working on the problem of information
and psychological wars on the Internet.
China
Everyone knows China. Especially in the context of the cyber confrontation with the United States.
It is worth paying attention to the structure of the PRC's cyber divisions. "At the top of the
hierarchy" of China's cyber divisions is the Third Directorate of the PLA General Staff (Technical
Intelligence Directorate), which is responsible for organizing and conducting radio - technical
intelligence and electronic warfare, as well as operations in cyberspace, including psychological
influence operations. In addition, the structure is responsible for ensuring the PLA's cybersecurity.
At least three research institutes operate in the interests of the Department.institutes and
twelve operational bureaus. The Department consists of many divisions, one of
which (known as Military Unit 61398), which is responsible for English-language facilities,
is located in Shanghai. The headquarters of the 3rd Directorate itself is located in Beijing, but in
Shanghai, Qingdao, Zhuhai, Harbin, Chengdu and other cities there are its divisions responsible
, among other things, for electronic intelligence, interception of electronic communications,
analysis of information from intelligence satellites, decryption of messages, detection
of enemy propaganda operations and organization of influence operations. According
to the Mandiant agency, which published a 60-page report on the Chinese cyber forces, the
most active of the Chinese participants in this activity is the APT1 department, which, according
to experts of the American company, is an organization of operators that have been conducting
a cyber action campaign against a wide range of targets since 2006. This means both collecting
information (cyber espionage) and countering it, as well as measures to influence the enemy's
citizens and counteract such influence. The authors of the report were able to establish that this
department is located in a 12-story building in the Pudong district of Shanghai. The same building
also houses a number of units of the military unit No. 61398 of the People's Liberation Army
of China (PLA) and the Department of information and psychological operations on the Internet.
In addition to the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of
Public Security (MOB) also deals with cybersecurity issues. Main functions of the MOB in the field of

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Cyberspace protection is carried out by the Department of Security of

Communications and Communication Facilities, which performs the following measures::
- conducting research in the field of inf - financing
of academic grants for conducting research on
cyberspace security issues (including among
educational institutions of the Ministry of Education).;
- certification of commercial sector products
for use in government electronic systems;
- management of companies that ensure the security of commercial information,
etc.

But the 11th Bureau of the Ministry of State Security (MGB)plays a key role
in ensuring information and cybersecurity China - Electronic Intelligence and computer
security (analogous to the US NSA). It is in charge of developing China's strategy in
the field of cybersecurity, including in the field of information and psychological operations
on the Internet, and coordinating the efforts of other departments in this area.

In other countries

In The Israeli Army there is a so-called "Division 8200", which

It deals with cyberwarfare in the broadest sense of the word, from defensive
and offensive cyber operations to psychological influence operations. This
unit is given the right to select the best-trained young people from among
the recruits and encourage them to use their intelligence to fight the electronic
systems of enemy countries or create viruses used in cyber warfare.
In France they are actively working on this topic. And the direction itself has
been transferred to the Directorate of External Security of France (Direction
générale de la Sécurité extérieure, DGSE), which deals with all types of
operations in cyberspace, including psychological ones.
In Germany The direction of cybersecurity was transferred to the Federal
Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND). BND has already spent €6.22
to launch the CE monitoring systemThe tests were conducted in the summer of
2014. The program tracks data that is publicly available in social networks and blogs,
identifying and blocking unwanted information in German, identifying attempts to
influence citizens and selecting scenarios to counter such attempts. The BND also
plans to provide €4.5 million in funding for the Nitidezza project to intercept and crack
encrypted HTTPS traffic. It is possible that by 2020, some of these funds will be
spent on acquiring zero-day exploits and unpublished vulnerabilities on the black
market. The program will be tasked with improving the security of government
computer systems, according to the publication Der Speigel. In addition to these
programs, a plan for monitoring Internet traffic outside of Germany is under development.
For example, €4.5 million was once allocated for the Swop project, which
significantly expanded the security service's access to international Internet traffic.

It is also known that similar work is being carried out in India, Turkey,
and
Iran, and not so long ago, data on the North Korean division of Bureau
121, which is responsible for activity in cyberspace, once again surfaced.

Information warfare goals

Basic
The main goal of any information war is to have a destructive effect on the enemy.
Such an impact is possible in several ways. You can influence the information
itself (destroy, modify, steal). You can do this in different ways. For example,

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

with the help of malware - specially created programs (they are also viruses, Trojans, worms and
other nasty things). You can influence the infrastructure elements that use this
information (intercept control)., disable or change technical
specifications). Again, this can be done in many different ways, including using
malware that exploits all sorts of vulnerabilities. You can also influence people
with information (deceive, shape public opinion). Such influence
is necessary to be able to control people-to manipulate them - to make sure that
the people chosen by the manipulator do the right thing. This action can be
an action or omission.
The desire to act or not act is achieved through such an impact on the target
group that will encourage these people to share the point of view
(idea, thought) promoted by the manipulator. In other words, the group of people being processed should
ultimately have a very specific opinion on the target issue. For example, a negative opinion about the
policy of the government of your country, and at the same time a positive opinion about the policy
of the manipulator government...
How is this solved
Just like that, no one will share your point of view. If we discard the "for money" option, then to
achieve this goal, it is necessary to use all the same "good old"
propaganda technologies, but with an" amendment " to the Internet. To simplify it completely, you need to
make sure that the promoted idea is seen by as many representatives of the target audience as possible,
seen as often as possible, seen on the resources that you trust more, and seen in the context
(media environment) that will make the information less rejected… In general, nothing new.
And those who are not familiar with the principles of propaganda-you can also use modern advertising as
an example. The same mechanisms are used.
Now, what do you need to do to make this mechanism work? Also nothing new, but adjusted
for the Internet as a means of delivering content to the end user - in our case, to
the target.
Spread the idea as much as possible
Maximize the distribution of promoted content-this means making sure that as
many people as possible see it. In certain circles, this technique is called "seeding" - the
same information is repeatedly duplicated in different sources. At least in blogs (created
specifically for this purpose) and on forums on behalf of nicknames, again created for distribution.
It is clear that this is the most primitive model, but even it works very effectively,
provided that the distributor is not too lazy and has made enough blogs, posts in them,
reposting, making friends with third-party users, etc... "A lie repeated a thousand times
becomes the truth" - this principle has long been known and used. It is also
used in advertising, although it is presented as a means of increasing brand awareness or something
like that.
Create mass visibility
You can create the appearance that your message is shared by a large number of people on the Internet
by creating the appearance of an active discussion. This is nothing more than
commenting on promoted content - creating a large number of comments to the material in a
short period of time. At the same time, all the same artificially created accounts can "participate" in the
comments at first . And if the comments themselves are quite interesting or
provocative, then gradually real characters will be drawn into the process. In this case, the content
will start promoting itself.
Create visibility of significance
In this case, the goal is to give "weight" to the material. This is achieved by placing the material in the TOP
of discussions, in the TOP of search engine results, and so on. That is, you need to make your material

20
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

most commented - contains the maximum number of comments. It's not

easy. For some publications, the number of comments reaches tens of
thousands. But if the work was done well in the process of creating
"mass visibility", then the material will already get into the TOP of discussions
due to the number of comments. To get to the TOP of search engine
results, you need to make a sufficient number of relevant links to the
material. But more on that below. Basics of Information Warfare
Sequence of aggressor's steps
Information War Cycle
If we talk about "big projects", then the information war has a certain
cyclicity. This is due to the need to adjust your actions depending
on the effectiveness of the impact. It all starts with making a decision about
the need for this very impact and determining the desired result -
TARGET DESIGNATIONS. In other words, the final goal is determined.
Without defining the ultimate goal , there is no point in continuing. After
all, to choose the forces and means to achieve the goal, you need to
know at least what you want to achieve. Drawing. Information warfare cycle.

After determining the final goal, strategy development

begins-determining how the attacker wants to achieve the desired result. Begins
SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT impacts. This is a rather extensive stage, since
it includes determining the target audience that will be
affected by information, identifying its vulnerabilities that will be exploited
during the impact, and, of course, calculating the costs for the planned
event (the number of accounts, the number of publications,the frequency
of publications, the number of authoritative sources).

21
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Next stage - PREPARING THE INFRASTRUCTURE for a planned

information war. At this stage,the necessary number of accounts
is created or purchased , a system for managing them is
created, content is prepared (shock, distracting, provoking), trolls and
writers are selected (those who will create new texts) , etc .

After that, it starts impact - that part of the information war that we
most often observe. And after some time, it is carried out PERFORMANCE
MONITORING impacts - checks whether we have reached the goal, deviated from the
plan, etc. If everything goes according to plan, then it is good, and if not, then adjustments
are made to the impact process. In addition, as the conflict progresses, the situation
itself may change (priorities may change, some factors may weaken or increase). In
this case, changes are made to the target designation and the cycle is repeated again.
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Target designation
The first step in developing an information warfare plan from the outside
the attacker needs a clear answer to the question, what exactly does he
want? To do this , it needs to determine the goals of influencing the object. Both the
methods of influence and the necessary resources depend on the goal set.
For example, a customer has a competing company that has an interesting
part of the market. Conventional economic measures do not allow for expansion
in the market (either there are no opportunities, or the competitor has a
solid margin of safety). Accordingly, the task of the subject is to capture the
market, and the way to implement it is to eliminate the influence of a competitor,
and the latter becomes a task for developers of psychological influence on the
conca team.rent. Consequently, depending on the situation, the goal of the
actions of the psychological impact specialist hired by him can be called destabilization
of the competitor's economic condition by non-economic methods,
i.e. sabotage of the enterprise's work by its employees, withdrawal of the most
valuable employees from the company, discord between decision makers, etc.

Study of the object of impact

First, the aggressor must determine what information is needed for the
implementation of the project, identify its sources, how to obtain it, and
collect information. The received information is processed and analyzed.
One of the main goals of such research is to identify the vulnerabilities of
the target (population of the country, region, ethnic group, specific society).
In the course of such a study , objects of direct influence (those who will be
targeted) are identified, their vulnerability from the point of view of psychological
impact, susceptibility to certain stimuli, character and behavior
characteristics... The objects of influence in this case are groups of
people with some common characteristics, interests, etc., less often
individuals (in the case of selecting "repeaters" and opinion leaders).

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Then the selected target audience is studied in terms of environmental

conditions, susceptibility, and vulnerability. Environmental conditions are those
conditions of their environment that have a significant impact on them. These can be
social,economic, physical, or geographical conditions… Special attention will be
paid to the system of authority and subordination of the object, the system of
developing, making and executing decisions, management difficulties,
inconsistencies and management mistakes., dissatisfaction with the management.
Attention is also paid to acute social problems that affect many people, conflicts
(especially protracted ones) and their background, existing groups and groupings
(their characteristics, resources, dependencies...), real and hidden leaders,
satisfaction with pay and attitudes to leadership, corruption and security, connections
with other communities (including countries economic situation, market policies,
business integrity, links with crime and law enforcement agencies, corporate culture,
ways to get out of critical situations… Then the enemy will try to identify the
vulnerable sides of the target audience. These are the audience's motivations,
exposure to stress and aspirations, manageability and resilience. We will identify those topics
that "catch on the nerve" of the majority of members of the community under study, or at
least opinion leaders and informal leaders. After that, it determines the audience's
sensitivity to certain influences. Often this is done with the help of real impacts -
a kind of reconnaissance in battle. It largely depends on the needs of audience
members, their motivations, and the direction of their actions.

Choosing the theme and symbolism of the impact

The opponent will choose the themes and symbols of psychological
impact depending on the vulnerability and sensitivity of the target audience
and the tasks set. Subject - the subject (plot) or focus of events held to
achieve the goal of psychological impact. Topic - a link between vulnerable
parties and the nature of the object's behavior, usually this is a "split of the group",
"coercion to certain actions"," refusal to take certain actions " ... When
choosing a topic, the enemy must take into account such trsdonations like:
- the content of the material should be simple - easy
to perceive and comprehend; the topic should be
- focused on the needs that the object understands;
- the topic should have a complete meaning; the topic should
- not contain ridicule for the object of influence.
The subject of impact is revealed by means of symbols, which can be
textual (articles, slogans, messages), visual (photo and video materials, objects, paintings),
or audio (appeals, rumors, music). Symbols are used to express ideas
and simplify the perception of these very ideas by the target audience. It should
be simple, clear, popular and not contradict the moral and ethical standards
of the object. The clearer the symbol is, the easier it is to remember, and the
closer it is to the needs and aspirations of the target, the more likely it is that it
will settle in the mind and begin its gradual, imperceptible destructive work.

Choosing the means and methods of presenting and disseminating information

The choice of how to provide information to the target will be made by the
attacker based on the same criteria: accessibility, comprehensibility, popularity,
and non-contradiction to moral and ethical standards. Unofficial and official
channels can be used for this purpose. The official ones, in this case, should include
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Media outlets where information can be really official, or it can be custom-made.

Unofficial channels include social networks, forums, blogs, and rumors,
respectively. For maximum efficiency, information from any source should have
the following properties, in addition to the listed properties: reliability or the
appearance of reliability, preferably confirmed at least indirectly by other
sources; timeliness, i.e. the appearance of a new information system.I it
(information) should be in the period of information hunger on this topic;
demand as a consequence of timeliness, and the source of information
should inspire confidence or respect. When choosing the means of
information dissemination, the enemy will take into account the following
criteria: - the ability to bring information to the target audience - the
information should be brought exactly to those who are affected; -
receptivity of the object - the object should understand the information
being communicated, and it should also cause planned reactions;
- availability
both for ofthe funds
subjectfor ofimplementation
impact and - the process itself should be inexpensive (if possible)
for the operator; - the source of
information should inspire confidence in the
audience; - timely delivery of information.

Development of the actual method of exposure

This stage consists of two stages. At the first stage, the enemy will bring
together the collected and synthesized information. The end result of this
sub-step is to get more or less clear answers to the following questions::
- what is the target of an information attack (audience), what (target group
are its vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and impact topics;
- what should the target audience be encouraged to do?;
- how can I use the vulnerabilities of the selected target
audience for
to achieve the goal;
what images (themes) can be used to influence the selected ones
-
vulnerabilities; when
should the - impact be initiated in order to achieve maximum impact; and by
what means- should the impact be implemented? In the process of preparation,
the enemy will try to choose the most optimal method of influence.
Most often, an instrument such as hearing is used for covert influence
. Hearing is a specific type of communication, it occurs either spontaneously
or artificially. A rumor can be either a consequence of information hunger,
or a particular popularity of this topic. And it is not difficult to start a rumor
in the Internet age . After
working through all the points and carrying out preparatory measures, your
opponent will start directly implementing the planned plan, in the process of
which he must monitor the audience's reaction and make adjustments if
necessary. Psi effects
"Everything is as old as the world" and the information warfare techniques used on
the Internet, in general, have long been invented and used in propaganda and advertising.
These techniques are based on well -defined effects of human perception of
information, perception of the subconscious, and therefore are difficult to control by
the person himself without special training. There are quite a lot of such effects, and
they are well described in the relevant literature on psychology, sociology, etc. I
propose to focus on those of them that are most often used in information wars.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

The "first love" effect

What you learned first, you believe more. Such is the way a person is made, that the information
learned first is highly trusted. After all, it is already "fixed" in the head, took its place,
"overgrown" with links to other information. And in order for conflicting information to "gain a
foothold" in the same head, it must first displace the existing one. And this is more difficult than just
settling on an unoccupied territory. It is for this reason that officials are so eager to be the first to
report to the management (to present information in a way that is more profitable for them). It is for
this reason that various centers of influence are so eager to be the first to "highlight" an event - in
order to present information in the right light, to their advantage, even if the event is not in their
favor. It is for this reason that such" coverage " of events is distributed as widely as possible using
bots, trolls, and reposting networks - so that the Internet is filled with this
version of the explanation of the event that is beneficial for the initiator, so that as many users as
possible go to the Internet and get acquainted with this interpretation of the event first.
Herd effect
What opinion more people support is true. And it works very often. We
go where the crowd goes, we agree when all our colleagues convince us
, it is psychologically easier for us to accept the point of view of the majority than to become a
"white crow". Therefore, if "everyone says black", then it is true, and it does not matter that this is
just an illusion created by someone. There is also a downside to this effect. This is fear - if
everyone around you is convinced that black is white and aggressively defends their point of view, then
you really don't want to express your opinion that doesn't coincide with the opinion of these "everyone".
You never know what - after all, they can spit on you, or even beat you… In this situation, a person
does not even think that his point of view is the point of view of the majority, and the raging crowd is
just an artificially created impression of the real state of affairs. This is how the majority begins to
submit to the minority. This effect is also called "social proof". It is most effective in
situations where it is difficult to understand (everything is very confusing), there is no time for a trial,
and you need to make a decision. This is where we look at how everyone is doing, and rely on
the majority opinion, forgetting, that this opinion may well turn out to be an illusion created for us
by a manipulator. This effect is also called the "spiral of silence". It is explained by the fear
of social isolation and begins to work at the moment when someone confidently expresses
their point of view on a socially significant topic. Those who disagree with what they hear prefer
to remain silent and not speak out, because they are convinced that they are in the minority, and
they are afraid of isolation.
Multiple repetition effect
This effect has been successfully used in advertising for a long time . It is important that the product
(brand, idea)that is being promoted as often as possible, they caught the eye of representatives of
the social group in which this promotion is carried out. Do you remember? - "a lie repeated many
times...". And you don't need proof, facts, explanations, and so on. Frequent and regular repetition
is enough. It is for this purpose that the same idea (idea, message) in manipulation events
is repeated many times by seemingly different people (for example, accounts in social networks)
with some difference in the choice of words, but with the same semantic load.
Group Support Effect
If a person associates himself with a certain social group, he will be much less
critical of the ideas and values supported by this group. This is how
mother nature brought up a person, regularly showing that you can only survive in a group. And the
larger the group , the higher the probability of survival. Does it remind you of anything?" For
example, groups in social networks…

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Appealing to authority
The willingness of people to follow the leader is also determined by the peculiarities of the historical
development of mankind. And this readiness is very successfully exploited for manipulation.
Remember "According to BritaRussian scientists...", "According to leading political scientists..." -
this is the use of non-personalized opinion leaders. But "President of the International
Dental Association Ivan Ivanov believes..." is already a personalized authoritative source
(opinion leader). The second option is preferable, since people are more likely to believe when they
know (or think they know) who the information is coming from. It is for the exploitation of this effect
that various statements and demarches are used-performances of pop, film, literature stars...
These people, on the one hand, give the information more credibility with their name, and on the
other hand, they make the information itself more significant - "If HE thinks so...".
An interesting variant of "authority" is manipulating numbers. The fact is that for
the uninitiated, numbers are something very accurate, and therefore reliable. And
information saturated with them is much easier to accept by consciousness. For this reason
, manipulators try to accompany their publications with "accurate" figures.
"The thief's hat is on fire"
Whoever justifies himself is wrong. The more excuses you make, the more people don't believe
you. It works especially well in combination with the "first love"effect. The one who first accused
(without proof), and he is in a better position. Washing is always
more difficult than pouring mud on it. So it turns out that it is tactically more profitable to blame first.
But if such an accusation is fabricated and disavowed by the opponent, the effect may be
reversed. It is necessary that the opponent could not, did not have time, did not understand, did not
want to neutralize the accusation. To achieve this effect, they often try to organize
a stream of accusations. While he is acquitted of the first charge, he has already been accused of
five more sins, and the opponent does not have time to justify himself.I, and the accusations are
"fixed" in the minds of the audience.
"Sociality" of information
We trust the message of a person more than the message of a news agency or
the official address of an official of any rank. And if you saw two people communicating on
a topic that interests us, then most likely this is true (as they describe it), because we "overheard"
someone else's conversation - no one pulled their tongue, they don't know that we are reading
them, they exchanged information among themselves, and didn't put it on the goal is to manipulate
us.... And we forget that this eavesdropped conversation could have been specially staged for us
with one goal-to create the illusion of authenticity.
Manipulating terms
A clearly negative idea cannot simply be given to the target audience as an alternative. We need
to make sure that people are less critical of this idea. You may not be able
to make the idea attractive, but you can make it less unpleasant. This will allow you to lower
the threshold of anxiety and "catch on" to the subconscious. For example, the US administration
during the Vietnam War referred to the destruction of villages by napalm as "
pacification operations." It doesn't sound so unpleasant, and therefore is more easily accepted by
the target audience. George Orwell wrote that soldiers do not die in war, but "die heroically." A
soldier who goes to serve in the army does not spend years of his life in the service of the regime,
he " pays a debt to the Fatherland." Such a simple replacement of words completely changes the
image of the same events and allows you to overcome the threshold of rejection in the human
mind. Make your idea attractive
The manipulation of terms has a more complex continuation - the introduction into the public consciousness
of the necessary ideas that were previously perceived negatively. Initially, the idea is
presented as a subject of discussion (discussion of ethics, expediency, danger... whatever). Goal -

27
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

addictive. When the audience gets used to it, the idea begins to be presented
as a subject of scientific research. Further - as something not so unpleasant. And later-as
quite possible.
Negative
This is the way a person works, so they are more likely to believe negative information.
Apparently, according to popular wisdom, " it is better to prepare for the worst, then the
best will be a pleasant surprise." People had to go through a lot of bad things in their
history. So I developed a reflex. Therefore , it is much easier to believe in negative
information, and not in positive ones. The same situation is observed in the media -

negative news is more rated. This is also used by manipulators.

Humor
However, information mixed with humor makes it easier to overcome internal
psychological barriers. This is due to the fact that humor reduces our anxiety, and
therefore it is easier to deceive us in a good mood. A mind that is complacent is less
cautious, more trusting. This is why ridicule is so effective in spreading negativity about an
object. Visual content
Images, demotivators, videos, sound, and other impact warrants,in addition to text, make
this impact significantly more effective. This is due to the fact that with such a
presentation of information, the impact on our consciousness is carried out through several channels
simultaneously. And our consciousness, attacked in several directions, quickly gives up.

Technological effects
All these psychological effects of influencing us when using the Internet as a channel
of influence also exploit the unique properties of the information dissemination channel itself
. Te samthese are properties that open up limitless possibilities for both a
decent user and an attacker.
Speed of distribution
Information on the Internet is distributed very quickly, including quoting the original source,
links to it and commenting on it, likes, reposts. As soon as you click
the"Publish" button, the information you enter becomes available to all
Internet users without exception. No paper media outlet can boast of such a speed
of content distribution.
No borders on the Internet
Information can be obtained from any source, including in other countries, on other
continents, and it can be distributed in any territory, without being distracted by
geographical and administrative borders. Any information is available from anywhere
in the world where there is an Internet connection, which allows an attacker to directly address any
audience.
Anonymity
You can remain anonymous on the Internet if you take appropriate measures. This means that
the same person can perform under an unlimited number of nicknames, accounts,
and identities.… One person (operator) can manage an army of virtual personalities (virtuals)

who will promote the same idea with different voices.

Duration of storage
Information can be stored indefinitely on the Internet. More precisely, as long as the Internet exists.
Moreover, information during the duplication process is no longer stored in one place, but in many.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

It is a distributed storage system with an independent storage location security

system. This is a very high level of storage reliability.
Information warfare techniques
Technically, there is only one method of distributing information on the Internet -
publication or stuffing. And then there is the application of the method of masking,
the method of overclocking, and the technology used to influence the audience.

Throw-in form
A throw-in is the delivery of information to the target audience that can cause a resonance.
The purpose of the event is to create a certain mood (opinion) in the audience once in a while.
This is the simplest and most widely used method of information warfare. It is associated with
a number of features and limitations. For example, most often it is necessary to legalize the
information that is thrown in, so as not to substitute the source or substitute yourself. You also
need to make sure that the information you throw in is delivered to the right target audience
(so that they can read it). These are technical issues that are solved differently depending on
the audience, the information being thrown in, the operator, and the tasks set, and the stuffing
itself has created a whole "family" of related techniques. For example, mass stuffing of the
same type (or identical) information became known as "seeding". Here are some of them.

29
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

US Vice President Dick Cheney has repeatedly publicly repeated the claim that a certain
Atta (terrorist leader) met with Iraqis in Prague as one of the key proofs of Baghdad's
involvement in the terrorist attack in the United States. And Colin Powell claimed
that Hussein had chemical weapons and illustrated his words with a flask with something
incomprehensible. In fact, all this turned out to be a hoax, but the stuffing from
an "authoritative" source did its job - public opinion was formed in the right way.

Legalization
Legalization of information is an action aimed at getting the opportunity to open a
public account.then use the information for some purpose. Such actions are necessary if
the information was obtained unlawfully (wiretapping of telephone conversations, hacking
of a mailbox) and its disclosure leads to criminal prosecution or public condemnation. Or
if you need to hide the source of this information (don't substitute the informant). Or if the
initiator is not sure about the accuracy of the data and wants to remain in the shadows
if they are exposed. This option is typical for stuffing explicit disinformation (fakes)
on behalf of virtual personalities in social networks. These same virtuals are created en
masse and imply that the owner is not a real person, but an operator who often manages
a certain number of such virtuals. This operator can be a person or a program. There
are many examples of legalization. The most famous ones are publications of mailbox contents
on behalf of various "cyber activists" and hacker groups. And the names of these
hacker groups are often used without their knowledge for legalization activities. Another
example is a variety of "drain tanks" - sites that publish all sorts of fried material, from
well-known compromising materials, WikiLeaks and Humpty Dumpty to imitation media.

30
"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Stuffing - apologies
Information warfare is always aimed at manipulating people. This is the main goal -
to push for some actions or to refrain from actions. The manipulated object
must do what the manipulator needs to do. This is achieved in various ways, but from
a technological point of view, it is the supply of the object of manipulation (or the target
audience) specially generated information. To put it another way-misinformation.
The only question is how to do this, so that the object is provided with this misinformation.
One of the methods is called seeding in professional slang. This is nothing more than the mass
distribution of the same or identical information. The goal is to "fill in" the necessary sector
of the Internet with specially prepared information so that the target audience (the object
of manipulation) is necessarily and first of all familiar with it. This is done using
virtual personalities - social media accounts created specifically for this purpose.
To quickly cover the desired sector of the Internet, you may need a lot of such
virtual personalities. This imposes some restrictions on the speed of implementation
of such an event. There is a slightly different way - to make
sure that your material is repeatedly duplicated by the media and real people in social
networks. To do this, it is necessary, in addition to the interest of the material itself, that the original
source of stuffing has a certain authority. It takes time to create such a source, and there
is usually no time. Especially when the information war is already underway and solutions need
to be implemented quickly. In this case, we use existing sources with established authority.
This can be an online media outlet, a well-known blogger, an online version of an offline
media outlet, or a TV channel. In general, a source that has been working on the Internet for
a long time and has its own extensive audience. And of course, the more famous the name of
this source, the wider the reach and stronger the influence.
And this is where the problem of choice begins. You need to throw in false information. And after
revealing its unreliability, the source will be discredited, and this cannot be allowed - it
is very difficult to create a new authoritative source. What to do? In
such cases, they use the technique under the conditional name "stuffing-apology". Its meaning
is zaklit needs to get its source out of harm's way. After you have entered the
necessary information. Of course, the opinion about the source will be shaken, but not as
radically as if it were just a throw-in. The essence of the technique boils
down to the fact that in the information field of the selected target audience , clearly provocative
information is thrown in, information that contradicts morals, the foundations of society, and
norms of behavior… And in case of a violent response-apologies for a mistake, ill-considered
actions, or ignorance. As a result, on the one hand, the target audience receives a portion
of modulating information, and the manipulator remains without punishment. On the other
hand, even if the main part of the target audience is rejected
by shock information, nevertheless it (information) will have an impact on doubters or those
who do not know,and this is already a good result. This is very convenient
- I did my job and it doesn't seem to be my fault - sorry, we didn't know, didn't think, didn't
know, couldn't have guessed... And there are more and more examples of using this technique
every day. This is due to the simplicity of the technique itself - you don't need to be serious

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

training sessions. Work out, think through, legendize, and organize escape routes in
case of failure. Remember-in February 2014, CNN called the monument in the Brest Fortress-
a monument to the courage of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War - "ugly"?

And DOZHd's supposedly ill-considered survey about the surrender of Leningrad to the Nazis?

And the recent provocation with the complex " Motherland calls!"on Mamayev Kurgan?
When the American Internet site Business Insider, dedicated to business and technology news,
made a rating of "the most absurd buildings of the Soviet era, which still stand today." Along
with various buildings and memorials from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the
list also includes the statue "Motherland Calls!" located on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

How do they do it
Choose a topic that requires adjustment from the point of view of the manipulator or is
a key topic in the problem of interest. It can be something that is the "foundation" of the
morality of society, something indisputable, something that does not cause doubts.
Then preparation is carried out - discussion of the topic in neutral tones and
involvement of the largest number of participants from the desired target audience in
this discussion. After that, the main stuffing of the same "shock" information is carried
out. Information that models the desired behavior of the target audience or elicits the
desired response. When the "shock" information is brought to the target audience, a
"retreat" is carried out- an apology for rash actions, an internal investigation, sprinkling
ashes on your head... But this is nothing more than a way to avoid responsibility. After
all, the planned event was carried out - the selected audience was familiarized with the
"shock" information and was subjected to manipulative influence.
Why do they do this?
This technique is one of many in information warfare, and therefore its ultimate goal is
the same as that of other similar technologies - managing audience behavior. Therefore
, the main question is always the same-who is the target audience? To answer this
question, you need to understand how this technology affects different audiences.
Enemy people
If the target audience is the enemy's people, then information that directly contradicts
the norms of their society, most likely, will not be able to have at least some impact on
the POhealthy people. Unless only on pre-prepared ones. But the impact on the
younger generation is quite possible. This is due to the fact that young people, and
especially teenagers, are more susceptible to such effects due to the lack of significant
negative experience. And the stories of the older generation are perceived as nothing
more than stories. The use of this technology in relation to the enemy's people ultimately
leads to a split in society, to the emergence of a group that shares your point of view, and not the
point of view of its co-religionists. If as a result of the impact, it was not possible to
achieve at least some significant success, then the attacker manages to find out the
"balance of forces" in the attacked society, the presence or absence of vulnerabilities in
society, and understand the reaction of society to stimuli. This, of course, is not exactly
what the attacker expected, but it is already data that will allow you to choose a more
successful tactic for the next impact. Your own people
This technology is even more effective in relation to "their" people. After all, in this case
, the impact goes to an already prepared audience, an audience that a priori more
favorably perceives the manipulator's information, an audience that already thinks
almost as the manipulator needs. And therefore, the impact on it is much more effective.
Working for "its" audience, the manipulator, using the "throw-in-apologies" technology,
usually pursues the goal of discrediting the enemy in the eyes of its citizens, forming in
society the necessary attitude to the problem, to the enemy.
How is the "Overton Window"stage of the project?
The current active use of this technology at various levels is not accidental,
but most likely is a stage of a more global event. It's very good all these

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

the events fit into the general scheme that has already been used to legalize
homosexuality in the West. We are talking about the technology described by
Joseph Overton-The Overton Window of Opportunity (The Overton Window of
Opportunity) or briefly "The Overton Window". It is also called the "window of
political opportunity". The essence of technology is that the required shift of
opinions in society is divided into several steps, each of which is not radical, but
shifts the perception of ideas only one stage, and the generally accepted norm
to its border. This makes possible a subsequent shift so that the achieved
position is again not radical in relation to the previous stage, which will make it
possible to take the next step, and the next, and so on until the idea is brought to
the state of generally accepted. According to this technology, ideas go through the
following stages of public perception: -it's unthinkable,
- it's radical,
- it's acceptable,
- it's wise,
- it's popular,
- it's official policy. One of the most common
ways to shift public opinion to the border of rejection is to imitate unbiased
scientific research; to set precedents for accepting alien ideas; to simulate
the struggle of radical supporters and opponents of ideas with "moderate"
supporters, on whose side the public's sympathies are attracted; to create
euphemistic names for unacceptable ideas.

Mass sowing of fakes

This is nothing more than the mass dissemination of information that does not correspond
to reality. The purpose of such an event may be to try to provoke the opponent to certain actions,
or to provoke the target audience (for example, to disobey the authorities). Another goal may
be the size of the adleakage of dangerous information - in the event of leakage of dangerous
information, rapid and mass distribution of information that is similar in texture, but differs
in meaning, begins. For example, accusing your opponent of something you did yourself. Or
someone else… The main thing is that there should be a lot of such information and the audience
would not be able to figure out where the truth is and where the lie is, at least-they would
not be able to figure it out quickly. In the same way, you can bring unprofitable information to
the point of absurdity by simply commenting on it in the most impossible ways. The main thing is
that there should be a lot of interpretation options (including absurd ones). And each option must
be duplicated multiple times. As a result, a person looking for such information will encounter
a barrage of mutually exclusive judgments, assessments, and opinions. Most readers will not
be able to figure it out and will either get completely confused or lose interest in the topic.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Noise level
This is also mass sowing, but not necessarily fake, but rather "parallel" information.
For example, in order to" drown out " dangerous information about a protected
object , a mass injection (noise) of various (real) information about the object is
carried out. The main thing is that this information should NOT be negative and there
should be a lot of it. A threshold of at least five times is usually set. This is enough to
prevent negative content from having a significant impact on the target audience.
One of the types of noise is an information block. In this case, the task is still the
same - to prevent the audience from getting acquainted with dangerous information. Here , the preponderance
threshold (usually) needs to be the same five or six times, but at the moment when
dangerous information appears, the preponderance should reach ten timesa military man.

Trolling
A variant of noise reduction is trolling. According to Wikipedia, trolling is the escalation
of anger or conflict by a participant in communication ("troll") by covertly or explicitly
bullying, belittling,insulting another participant or participants, often in violation of
the site's rules and, sometimes unconsciously for the "troll" himself, the ethics of
network interaction. It is expressed in the form of aggressive, bullying, or abusive
behavior. It is used both by personalized participants who are interested in greater recognition,
publicity, and outrage, and by anonymous users without the ability to identify
them. Alternatively, it is possible to fill comments with anything, but not with thematic
messages. Or messages that discourage normal users from reading them. The main
thing is that these very ordinary users either do not notice what the initiators of trolling
decided to hide, or do not want to read, being disgusted with what the trolls wrote.

Trolling is often used in different formats and for different purposes.

For example, to ridicule an opponent or to "emotionally destabilize" them,
or to drag the opponent or their resources into meaningless bickering.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Discrediting
Discrediting ( from the French Discrediter - to undermine trust) - deliberate actions aimed
at undermining authority, image and trust (http://ru.wikipedia.org). In our case , we
mean discrediting in the eyes of users a certain idea, object, event, author of the publication,
or the site itself where the publication is posted. The goal is to show the negative
aspects by maximizing them as much as possible. If there are no negative aspects,
then you need to invent them, create them, provoke them ... Methodical denigration
sooner or laterzdno will bear fruit. Examples of anonymous discrediting are various
black lists, and open discrediting- direct accusations of all sins. For an illustration, you
can listen to the speeches of representatives of foreign ministries of some countries.

There are different kinds of discredits. For example, by exaggerating the

Object's weaknesses. Opponents created an account on behalf of the Target or
used an account imitation program. They took as a basis the condescending
attitude of the public towards the Object and disseminated information of a clearly
provocative nature on its behalf, in this case pointing out its incompetence.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Another option for discrediting is to highlight the real error of the Object. Remember the
mistake of activists "from the other side", when a text on behalf of a woman was published
on behalf of an account with an obviously male name. On the one hand, this puncture
showed a flaw in the management system of "combat" accounts, and on the other hand, it gave an
excellent opportunity to discredit not only this message, but also all those who are similar to it.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

And there were so many examples of discrediting the Russian Orthodox Church, mostly artificially
created. Remember this demotivator? An expensive car against the background of a collapsing church
seems to clearly indicate a stolen priest. The effect is enhanced by an unusual license plate of the car.

True, with a small study of the situation, it turned out that the car
was not his, and the number was drawn.... But the goal is achieved
- the demotivator has the necessary impact on the target audience.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Another way to discredit them is to use the empathy that is common to most people
. At the beginning of the civil war in Syria, there were a lot of such stuffing discrediting
the legitimate authorities in the country. Since the order for them was quite large, they
were created mainly on old material. Like this publication of the photo, which, according
to the authors, was supposed to show all the inhumanity of Bashar al-Assad in Homs.

However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that the photo is not
at all from the long-suffering Homs, but is a frame from the feature film
"The Pianist" and depicts the Warsaw Jewish ghetto during World War II.

Distraction
Diverting the audience's attention to an unusable object
is what law enforcement agencies call this technique. And its meaning boils down to
switching the audience's attention from an event that is important for the manipulator to
something else. Such switching takes place using different methods. The most famous is
sensationalism. When something needs to be hidden or prevented from developing, an
event is selected, artificially created, or imitated that attracts more people's attention. And
attention to this distracting event is cultivated in every possible way by discussions, periodic
stuffing of new details, imitation of active discussions... As a result, the audience
enthusiastically discusses the sensation thrown at it and does not pay attention to the
problem being defended.
A variety of conspiracy
theories that can't be tested work well as a distraction. They are also good because they can be"deactivated" at any
needed.

It is often used to distract attention to something more pleasant, for example, funny,
causing positive emotions. Remember the story of Vyatka kvass at Putin's press conference?
When the journalist described the situation in a peculiar manner and asked a question. All other
topics, including very complex and emotional ones, somehow faded into the background.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

It is also often used to divert attention to the antipode, as in the

situation with an attempt to negatively influence the reputation of Natalia Poklonskaya.

In addition to distracting the audience, you can also distract the opponent
himself, including his resources. If you create the appearance of something that is
more important to them than the Object you are protecting. Remember how popular
unrest over the project of the second transoceanic canal in Nicaragua began "on
time". The main shareholder of this event is China, and the protests began immediately
after official Beijing indicated its support for Russia in the situation in Ukraine.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

However, before that there was also the "umbrella revolution" in

Hong Kong. But it's more about testing technology in Chinese society.

Virtual personalities (surrogates)

The Internet has enabled users to create an unlimited number of accounts in a wide
variety of services, including social networks and blog hosting sites. There is nothing
immoral about this- I forgot my account password and created a new one. I don't like
my current image- I quit this account, made a new one that is more appropriate to
my "I" (as it seems to me). But, like everything else in our world, such an opportunity
can be used not only for good, but also for harm. You can use fake accounts to
mislead other users, manipulate their behavior... And the Internet makes it possible to
carry out such manipulation literally on an industrial scale that it is not necessary to
use it.long-term adopted by the state. After all, it is no longer mass media (newspapers,
radio, TV) or culture (theater, cinema, literature, fine arts), but an entity that
contains all this and therefore has an even greater influence on people's minds.

As soon as the Internet became aware of its potential as a means of

manipulation, this ability was immediately used at various levels, up to the
state level. And the very accounts that are not a reflection of a real person
began to appear on an industrial scale. On their behalf, information that the
customer needs is distributed -mass manipulation of real users has begun. In
fact, this is the main purpose of such virtuals - manipulating public opinion in
one form or another. The goals can be very diverse: from adjusting the
population's attitude to a certain problem to a full-scale information war, but the tool is one-
manipulation with the help of artificial Internet creatures posing as people.

There are two concepts that are closely related to fake accounts. These are bots and
trolls. Moreover, the use of these designations often "intersects". Bots are called trolls, and
trolls are called bots. But in the task of analyzing content in the framework of countering
information warfare, this division is not as important as understanding that a certain account
distributes content (generates, reposts, likes, comments) "at the behest of the soul" or as a
job (for a fee). Whether for money or for a counter service or for some other reward-it doesn't
matter. The main thing is that this account distributes content artificially. That is, the main
criterion for dividing accounts into "people-not people" is whether their behavior is natural or
artificial.research institute. And then it doesn't matter if it's a bot, a troll, or some other
entity. The main thing is that he performs certain actions on the Internet on a paid basis.

To simplify understanding and provide relative uniformity in the presentation of

the material, I further suggest calling such accounts surrogates or virtuals. Moreover,
the word surrogate more accurately expresses the essence of these products.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

What are surrogates?

Simple surrogate
Single
The simplest surrogate option is a single account created by the user for some
purpose. For example, to get access to a group in a social network where the owner is
not allowed for some reason. So he creates his new reflection on the Internet,
correcting it so that they do not recognize the real owner and are more willing to allow
the desired content in the group.
There are not many such surrogates, they are usually controlled by their owner
and are rarely used for large-scale manipulation activities. Nevertheless, they
are used to distribute, if not illegal content, then certainly not entirely
morally relevant.
Groups
Groups of surrogates up to several dozen are usually "owned" by advertising, PR
, or SMM agencies that manipulate consumer opinions on behalf
of commercial structures. Most often, such groups distribute commercial content, but
there are enough examples when a political customer also gives work to their owners.
This is due to the fact that the effectiveness of the "work" of surrogates depends,
among other things, on their "pumping". This is a collective term that also indicates
how widely a given surrogate can spread information (how many people can use it).read
about), and how authoritative this surrogate is (how uncritically others will perceive his
information). And to get high indicators of these characteristics, you need time and
some effort. Programmatic group management
Naturally, surrogates are more effective the more they resemble a living person. And to
do this , you need them to constantly perform some human actions (comment, repost,
like, publish). Moreover, these actions should be emotionally colored. When
there are one, two, or three surrogates in control, then
one operator can easily perform actions to maintain the appearance of humanity. But
when there are several tens or hundreds of them, this becomes a serious problem. And
placing custom content in several hundred accounts at the same time is not such an
easy task. To solve this problem, they create programs for managing such accounts.
Surrogate for sale
If there is a demand for fake accounts, then there is also a supply of these very
accounts and their services. Surrogates were created for sale, for renting, for one-time
events, for long-term actions. There are also intermediaries between those who need
to buy such services and those who are ready to sell them.
Comment Exchanges
These are platforms where you can order certain comments in certain services
(social networks, blogs, forums). Those who are called "advertisers" on such
exchanges choose surrogates suitable for their task, create the necessary content, or
offer the account owner to create it (specifying parameters such as theme, tone, etc.)
and pay for the service. This can be a comment, including a post in the media, a
repost, a like, or a direct publication of some material on your own behalf. Owners of
suitable surrogatestov perform the ordered action on behalf of the accounts under their
control. Thus, with some financial resources, you can create the illusion that a certain
topic is actively discussed by people (reposted, commented on, liked, distributed). This
means that it is very important for users, and they are interested in it.…

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Account Exchanges
In addition to the comment exchanges, there are also account exchanges, where the
subject of sale is a ready -made account with the necessary parameters for the
customer. Performers create a surrogate, fill it with content, "pump" it, creating the
illusion of a large number of "friends", high activity, membership in the right groups,
etc. If necessary, the surrogate is customized to meet the customer's requirements
(social characteristics, preferences, behavior style) and sold to the customer, who
already uses such surrogates at their discretion. Stolen Account
Often, comment and account exchanges use stolen surrogates, i.e. accounts
of real people, but in one way or another "stolen" from them. After all, it takes time to
create an account and promote it, and therefore there are those who are ready to
violate not only the norms of morality, but also the law.
Viral surrogate
Recently, there has been a different approach to the distribution of shock
information using surrogates. In this case, the account that distributes such
content is not exactly a surrogate. In general, this is a normal account of a normal
person who did not plan to visit the relevant exchanges, and did not rent out his
account. However, shock information is distributed on behalf of his account.
Sleeping surrogate (Trojan)
Many people have heard about botnets. They are usually associated with vsevo
possible cybercriminals who profit from unlucky users or from the implementation of
DDoS attacks that lead to the failure of Internet services. But similar botnets
are also used to distribute shock content. To your computer (smartphone, phone,
tablet) then a small program (bot) is installed, which periodically checks if there
is any command from the control center. When such a command is detected, this bot
executes it. For example, it publishes the same " shock content "on behalf
of the user's account on whose device it"lives". Or, when the browser
is opened by a user (on whose device the bot has settled), it replaces the page it
opens with a similar one, but containing similar information that it received from the
control center. And the user sees no longer a real picture, but an artificially created
one, especially for them. Such a "picture" that pushes it to the actions necessary for
the manipulator. Surrogate worm
Another type of malicious software for information warfare is a "worm". By analogy
with the already familiar destructive programs, also called "worm", the worm for
information warfare gets access to the contact data of the victim and sends itself (in one
form or another) to these contacts. In parallel, once on a new computer, it performs
a pre-programmed action. For example, it publishes the same shock information
on behalf of the victim's account. Or it sends shock information on behalf of
the victim to the email address of everyone in the address book. Or something else.

Features of information warfare in the Internet

All these special properties of information and the peculiarities of its circulation on the
Internet somewhat change the tactics and strategy of conducting information warsy. And
really-why throw leaflets over the territory of the enemy from a balloon, if to inform
the enemy's personnel, it is enough to send a corresponding message to their smartphones
and phones? Or to make it more clever-to spread the news of the desired content
through the news agency that this staff reads. Or become their Facebook friends and

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

post the relevant news, or, or, or.... Vast expanses for creative
artists. The Internet
has become the most effective tool for waging information warfare because it is cheap, simple,
and fast. Moreover, the Internet has changed the tactics and strategy of conducting
information warfare. If in the pre-Internet era, the process of delivering information to the target
audience itself took some quite tangible time,then with the advent of the Internet, this is one
second - more precisely, as much time as it takes to click on the "enter"button. This means
that the defender has no time left to make decisions - not at all - you need to act ahead
of time. We need to take preventive measures. We need to find a way to identify preparations
for an information war. You need to "cover up" your vulnerabilities, and even earlier you need
to identify them yourself.
But there are several technological aspects that need to be analyzed in more detail, so
that later on they can be used to build their own methods of conducting information warfare.
Anonymity
An Internet user needs anonymity in order for your interlocutor to perceive
information from you as information from his friend, or ally, or colleague, or ... In other
words, anonymity is the basis for legendization, the foundation for creating virtual
personalities, on behalf of which you will act.
On the other hand, anonymity is also needed to "gain confidence" in the attacker. Whether
under the guise of a potential victim, or under the guise of a more experienced comrade, or ...
Most importantly- in order to obtain discrediting information, identify weaknesses, distract,
direct on the wrong track, lure into a trap...
Therefore, you need to devote enough time to anonymity issues. In order to understand how
the enemy can act and how we need to act.
There are different ways to "leave traces" on the Internet so that you can be identified later.
This is mainly due to the peculiarities of the Internet itself (IP, MAC addresses, site cookies,
and other software identifiers), personal preferences (shared e-mail or account
writing, a single photo or signature), and malicious software.
IP
An IP address is an address that can be used to identify a device on the Internet.
Any device on the network has this address, otherwise it (the device) will not be able to
receive the information. And this IP address is the easiest way to identify the device and its
owner. So, when visiting websites, sending emails, registering accounts, you leave your IP
address. And you can use it to determine from which device each specific action was
performed. And your provider has the installation address of the device with this very IP. And
there is data about where, when you went from this IP, and what you did. In addition, the sites
you visit also have their own logs with data from which IP you came, when and what you did.
The same logs are kept on the intermediate servers that your packets pass through (requests
and responses to them). Everywhere you can find out who did what, where they came from,
when they did it, and what they did. For this reason, if you want to remain unrecognized, you
must hide this IP address.t or replace it. For this purpose, a variety of anonymizers are used,
from simple browser plug-ins to specialized programs like Tor (abr. from English. The Onion
Router). Browser and cookies
Another way to identify a user is to leave a specialized
identifier in the browser - a cookie. Initially, this solution is designed to allow the
target site to "recognize" the user and apply their individual settings. But it was the"recognition"
of the user that caused the danger to the anonymity of these cookies. Accordingly,
the cookie must be deleted. You can configure the browser to clear the entire history along with
cookies when you close it. This way you will also protect yourself in addition.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Data in the profile

This refers to the data that you leave when filling out personal data during
account registration. You can, of course, fill it out at a minimum, but then your account will
very much resemble a "schematic" one, and they are less trusted. Therefore, you need to
fill it out, but in such a way that the accounts of different virtual personalities differ from each
other. This applies to both your avatar and contact details. It will look strange if different
virtual personalities arguing with each other have the same e-mail address.
Geolocation
Recently, geolocation has been increasingly used. And on a number of services (in social
networks, for example), it is possible to collect data about the geolocation of users.
Moreover, a number of mobile applications automatically collect geolocation data in a
hidden way and transmit it to the" parent " site. Therefore, if a person writes that they are
from St. Petersburg, and the API for getting information about posts/tweets/comments
shows that they are in Moscow, this is also a failure.
Metadata
All files have their own metadatavalues that are assigned programmatically when the
file is created and modified. Metadata includes the date and time when the file was created,
the name of the computer on which the file was created, the date and time when the file
was modified, geodata (coordinates of the device location at the time of file creation), in
which program the file was created.... And a lot more. This metadata can easily disavow the
deception that is being used as a basis for manipulative influence. For example, a user
claims that they took a photo at a certain time and place, but the metadata shows that
they took it at a completely different time and place....
Behavioral signs
This is a much more complex area, but nevertheless,algorithms have already been tested
that allow us to identify users based on their actions. For this
purpose,individual typing habits (especially stable expressions),
behavior patterns on certain sites, and so on are used.
TOP lists
TOP lists are the opinion of some rating system about the popularity of a resource (pages,

news) and/or its value to users. This opinion is formed according to different
rules, often with a political connotation and taking into account the preferences of the rating
owner. But one way or another, these TOP lists directly affect users. For example, using
the herd effect - "if everyone thinks so, then I also think so", or "slipping" the user the first
necessary information. The "first love" effect is already triggered here.
TOP search engine results
This is nothing more than the opinion of search engines, which information is most suitable
for your query in the search bar of Yandex, Google, Rambler, Yahoo and the like. And this
information is sorted exactly according to the relevance (correspondence) of this very
information.ai for your request. Those. at the top (in the first position) will be the most
relevant, in the second-a little less relevant, and so on. And it is natural that the first thing
you read is the first ones in the list. TOP discussions
These are ratings of blog hosting sites and various blog analysis systems. They are
structured by the number of comments (i.e., supposedly by the activity of the discussion).
Whichever post has more comments is at the top of the list. The goal is to identify the most
discussed and therefore most popular posts. They are presented to the user as the most
popular, despite the fact that the "popularity" (the number of comments) is created by bots.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Another option is when structuring occurs by the number of blog subscribers.

Which blog has more subscribers is more authoritative
TOP news items
This is the news agency's opinion on the significance of the news. The decision in
this case is made, as in the blogosphere, by the number of comments to the news, likes,
and repostings. Different systems have different counting algorithms, but the point is
the same-to determine which news item is most significant based on these criteria.

Infofield monitoring
In order to see the beginning of the attack in time, and even better, the preparation for it, you
need to track the actions of the enemy. And the counteraction process itself must be
constantly monitored to detect attempts by the opponent to take revenge. It is necessary to
carefully monitor the opponent, his actions, his reputation, and the information field
surrounding him. And also for your reputation, your information field… So the issue of regular
monitoring is very relevant. This observation
will help you understand how the opponent acts (his methods, techniques)., where his
"pain points" are (in our case, pain topics), understand his infrastructure - his sites, who are
his friends, and most importantly-who are his enemies (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
In relation to yourself , observation will allow you to identify changes in the information field
(increase or decrease in mentions), the trend of this change (positive - negative), and to
some extent the reason for the change. It is clear that such manual monitoring is very tedious.
Therefore, you need to automate the process as much as possible. There are a number of
solutions for this, from simple to quite complex.
Bookmarks in the browser
This is the easiest way. And it is suitable for simple cases. Only because
the automation here is minimal. The essence of the method is that you need to collect in one
place all the bookmarks for resources that are important in terms of information. These can
include news pages from key portals and search results pages for news search engines
related to your topic. Such a simple combination allows you to open all the necessary
pages at once with one click and go deeper into the study. But if the number of new materials
is measured in hundreds every day, then bookmarks will not help much.
Browser Plugins
Examples of such plugins are Update Scanner for Firefox or Page Monitor for Chrom.
They allow you to track changes on the observed pages. These changes
are"highlighted", and you can quickly find out what has changed on the page, and not
remember what it looked like last time. The page can be a news page or
a search engine query results page. In this case, it is even easier to identify new things, and
therefore less time spent.
RSS aggregators
RSS is a format for distributing news on the Internet. It is very simple, common and
convenient. Under it, a huge number of "readers" have been created, whichthey collect RSS
feeds of news from these resources and present them to you in a convenient way. There are
online RSS aggregators. This solution is convenient because the collection process is
continuous and regardless of whether you have turned on the computer or not. One of the
free ones is Yandex. Feed. Google Rider, unfortunately, was closed allegedly due to
unpopularity. Other examples of such aggregators: Bloglines is one of the most popular online
aggregators. It is easy to use and very fast even on a dial-up connection.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

NewsGator is an online service where RSS sources are presented in the form of a tree menu,
as in most programs for working with email correspondence.
NewsAlloy - because it is packed with functionality, it can give a head start to Google's RSS reader.
Offline aggregators "settle" on your computer, and therefore have their own advantages.
Examples of such solutions:
SeaMonkey is a web browser, HTML editor, RSS aggregator, mail client and IRC client in
one package.
Omea Reader is a free aggregator of RSS, email, Internet pagers, and
NNTP messages.
FeedReader is a powerful, user-friendly program for receiving, reading, and managing
news blocks.
FeedDemon is a popular program for receiving and processing news from websites in
RSS and XML formats.
BlogBridge is an RSS feed aggregator that offers convenient features for reading news from websites and
blogs.
WebSiteWatcher
The program is designed, like Update Scanner and Page Monitor, to detect changes on
controlled pages. But due to its specialization, this program is able
to control a huge number of pages and present information in a more convenient
way. In addition, there are a lot of useful settings and "adaptations" for different types of sites.
Program website http://www.aignes.com/
RSSHandler
Most RSS aggregators have a single generic tag.The only drawback is that they limit themselves to downloading
content and organize it according to "sources" only. And that's
not enough. Especially when there are several hundred RSS feeds, and there are several thousand news items in the
. With such volumes, the advantage of the RSSHandler program becomes clear. RSSHandler,
in addition to collecting news, also puts them in folders created by users in
accordance with the rules created by the user. For example, you can collect
all the news about one person in one folder, and about another person in another folder. Even if these news
items were originally in the same RSS feed. Program website http://www.ryalsoft.ru/
Avlanc
Further development and improvement of the idea of convenient presentation of a large volume
of news (and not only). This includes not only grouping them by object, but also creating
a Dossier. In addition to RSS
feeds, the program also uses pages that do not have RSS but contain news as sources of information. Program we
centre.ru/avl1.htm
SiteSputnik
Perhaps the greatest number of tools for collecting information from sites and presenting
it is provided by the SiteSputnik program. Information may be collected and from the news pages, and RSS
streams, and from the search results of search engines (Google, etc.), and from the search results,
local search engines on the websites, and information about the change in the controlled page.
The tools for processing the collected data are also significant. This includes grouping according
to complex rules created by the user, deleting duplicate information,
exchanging data between different site satellites, and automatically generating and
providing reports to customers of different information. In my opinion, the best solution for
monitoring.
Program website http://www.sitesputnik.ru/

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Willingness to respond
Your activity in opposing the aggressor will definitely be noticed by this very
aggressor. Since it would disrupt his plans, it would at least ruin his mood. It might
even ruin his reputation. In this situation, different people behave differently - the
reaction may not be predictable. In the best case scenario, your opponent will
increase their influence on the information field by activating the available
resources. You need to be prepared for this, i.e. prepare your additional resources
and use them when the opponent's activity increases. But, most likely, the opponent
will try to take revenge in another way. So to speak, to carry out asymmetric actions
- actions that go beyond the manipulation of information. For example, they may try
to hack your main site. The one that accumulates all the information and is
promoted in search engines. Take control, delete content, replace content… So that
such actions are not fatal for you - make copies of the material and / or copies of the
site. Better yet, create several "mirrors" and an archived copy on your server (computer).
They can order DDOS, and your site will be unavailable to users for some time. To
overcome this type of problem, use duplicates on different hosting sites - large
hosting sites (failure-and burden-resistant hosting sites). And the same" mirrors " of
the site will also help. They may try to find out who exactly is carrying out the
counteraction - find you. And apply pressure in one form or another. That is why the
issue of anonymity is always important in information wars.

Counteraction strategy
Sequence of actions
What to do and why
Beyond the obvious risk of "falling under the answerin the physical sense,
when you openly oppose the aggressor, you also complicate your own work by acting openly.
Your opponent is aware of your efforts and of course takes action. There may be different
measures, but they definitely won't help you. With open actions, you provoke your opponent to
make more effort, which means that you will have to make more effort on your
part. And this is no longer a battle of intelligence, but a battle of resources, of which your opponent
may have much more. Moreover, by responding on your own behalf, you add negativity
about yourself. After all, your name will be clearly associated with the information that you
distribute. And if you respond to aggression, then the
information you spread is unlikely to be peaceful and positive.
Therefore, the only reasonable option is "partisan" actions. Anonymous, secretive and
unpredictable-this is how the response to information aggression should be carried out. See how it
works on the internet. "Suddenly, "" out of nowhere, "or" out of the blue, " negativity begins to
appear en masse. It is impossible to understand where the source is, because there are so many
sources, it is not clear who to "push", with whom to "negotiate", what to do, where to run - a real
chaos for the target. Disorientation, stress, time pressure, uncertainty... And if the source of the
negative is known, then it is clear what to do and how to do it - no fuss, but systematic response
steps. And we don't need the opponent to feel confident, we need the opposite. Therefore, you
should not give your opponent unnecessary information, including about the source of his troubles.

Accordingly, having discovered an injustice in relation to you, you need to

stop the first urge to respond urgently, you need to be patient. To begin with -
define - this actiona well-thought-out and planned attack, or someone's
spontaneous actions. Don 't rush to answer. After all, a lot depends on it. If you are inclined to
think that this is an organized action, then you need to take several mandatory
actions. It is not a fact that these actions will give one hundred percent results, but
at least they will help you assess the situation (the scale of the disaster).
Remember the cycle of information warfare? So the cycle of countering
information warfare is generally the same. And this is due to the fact
that the same weapon is used against the aggressor - information.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Everything starts with detection, but detection of an attack is already too late. It is much
more important to identify the preparation for an attack. And here the main thing is to understand
by what signs you can determine that there is a preparation for aggression. It is possible to
identify the "Planning" stage only by using agent methods. Therefore, we will not dwell on it.
Although monitoring (on the Internet) the actions of key figures of a potential enemy, who in one
way or another may be involved in the preparation of an information war, can make it possible to
detect changes inherent in making or discussing decisions about information aggression.

Start monitoring
So-it is urgent, if you do not do this, to start regular monitoring of the Internet for statements
in your address. This will allow you to see the "picture" in its entirety, rather
than in fragments , and will make it possible to "catch" dangerous trends in time.
And with a high-quality approach , you can predict the development of the situation.
You can set up such monitoring manually if you (or the protected item) are not
too much in the media, i.e. the number of new mentions per day does not exceed
hundreds. But even in this case, you will need to spend some time collecting and reading materials.
The collection is available from the help of search engines (Yandex, Google). Once
you have generated a high-quality request, in order to minimize information garbage
in the search results, you save this request as a bookmark and activate it if necessary.

You can use many online monitoring services. This

method has its advantages. First , you don't need to spend
time on the collection process itself - everyone will do it for
you. Second , the entire amount of data collected is always
available to you from anywhere, as long as there is an Internet
connection. Here are the most well-known monitoring
programs: системы:argylesocial.com alterian.com/socialmedia
attensity.com/home attentio.com babkee.ru

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

beevolve.com
bottlenose.com/product
br-analytics.ru
brandoscope.ru
brandspotter.ru
brandwatch.com
buzzcapture.com
buzzlook.ru
buzzient.com
buzztalkmonitor.com
buzzware.ru
collectiveintellect.com
converseon.com
crimsonhexagon.com
cymfony.com
digimind.com elect.mlg.ru en.mention.com
gainsight.com generalsentiment.com
hodyat-sluhi.ru hootsuite.com integrasco.com
jagajam.com/ru iqbuzz.ru kissmetrics.com kribrum.ru lithium.com
loudpixel.com maritzresearch.com/solutions/social-intelligence.aspx
mediavantage.com meltwater.com nmincite.com
monitor.wildfireapp.com moz.com netvibes.com/ru
newssentiment.eu/main/index.jsp
oracle.com/us/solutions/social/overview/index.html
peerindex.com poppler.ru
radian6.com
rowfeeder.com
samepoint.com
sdl.com/products/social-intelligence
semanticforce.net
silentale.com
silverbakk.com
simplymeasured.com
socialbaker.com
sociable360.com
socializer.ru
socialmention.com
socialreport.com
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

social-searcher.com
socialwatchdog.ru
spiral16.com
sysomos.com/products/overview/heartbeat
tagboard.com
topsy.com
trackur.com
twelvefold.com/splash/
veooz.com
visibletechnologies.com
webtrends.com/solutions/social
wigisocial.com
wobot.ru
youscan.ru
Install the aggressor
Second , you need to try to install the aggressor. Who is it. You will have to act in
several directions at once. Try identifying the authors of a negative post by
following the chain of reposts and comments. If the attack is massive, then this procedure is quite
time-consuming, but you need to do it. First, identify the original source - where
the spread started. And analyze the original source, not duplicates, reposts, and reprints.
Ask yourself the classic question " who benefits from this?". Who will receive direct or indirect
preferences if you are eliminated as a player? With whom were there any obvious or hidden
conflicts? The answers to these questions can narrow down your likely opponents. And these are
already working hypotheses for further development.
Understand enemy forces
Third, you need to determine the" strength " of the enemy and its capabilities. To do this, you need
to identify all the nicknames that are involved in the" dispersal " of negative information. Either a
repost, or a comment... This will provide additional information to identify the author, allow you to
organize surveillance directly on the perpetrators, and not on the entire Internet, and will help you
assess what forces and means are needed to counter them. After all, the approximate cost of the
bot is known - so you can roughly estimate the level of costs of your opponent. And at this level-to
understand the level of funding and the seriousness of intentions. Yes, and with the general
strategy of the enemy will allow you to understand.
Develop an action plan
The fourth is to determine (at the initial stage, at least in general terms) what and how to do it.
What to "squeeze" out of the search results, what to "promote", what information to disperse now,
and what to leave for later, where to make a distracting blow to a possible opponent, and where
to distract the audience on another topic.... But one way or another, you will approach the issues
of promoting materials that are profitable for you. Therefore, you need to understand how this is
done technically. Officiale-mail addresses
Let's say you see that negative information is displayed in search engine results based on your
full name (or your company name). What to do, what to do?
Take a look - the negative is isolated or it has already become widespread. To do this
, you just need to first look at the first page of search results. There is one
such material or a lot. Then sort the same result by date. Then you will see the latest content
containing your full name. Again , are there many of them, or just one? Once you understand
this, you will understand how much effort the opponent has spent and how much effort
you need to spend on countering. If this negative is a single one, then you can try to "work"
with the administration of the resource where the negative is posted. If this material somehow
violates the Law (slander, disclosure of personal data, threats, nationalism, etc.) - feel free to
write a reasonable notification to the resource administration. But it is justified - with screenshots,
with an exact indication of phrases and articles that are violated by this. Again, "if" the resource
does not specialize in compromising materials, then it should be used in the following cases:

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

the owners will care whether you contact law enforcement or not. But, alas,
this method does not always work. So be prepared that your request will be ignored.
And again, "if" you are ready to waste time, then contact law enforcement agencies.
Currently, there is a good trend - the application of the same laws to the Internet
as in real life. Therefore, I hope that over time, compliance with the law on the
Internet will become the norm. Identifying and detaining traffickers in drugs,
pornography, and weapons... How to tell if there is a war or not
The main problem when making decisions in the information spaceThe key to
learning about wars is to understand whether the increase in negative references is
a natural phenomenon or an artificially created illusion. What kind of counteraction
strategy will be used depends on this. If such a surge is a natural phenomenon
(communication between real people), then only tools will be used to counteract it. If
the surge of negative mentions is created artificially, then the tools will be different.
But this is only if the impact has already started. And once it has started, you are
already too late - you need to take urgent measures, most often incurring losses.
But such a situation can be avoided if you think through possible counteraction
scenarios in advance and build a simple monitoring system. To begin with, let's
recall the cycle of information warfare - the impact does not begin suddenly. It is
preceded by some stages. Do you remember? - the impact is preceded by TARGETING,
SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT, and INFRASTRUCTURE PREPARATION.

Target designation

Script development

Preparing the infrastructure

As already mentioned a little earlier, at the TARGET DESIGNATION stage

, you can only understand the impending impact with the help of agent work. Or assume
such a possibility based on your knowledge of real and potential opponents, their
interests and resources. But the next stages require some actions from the opponent. And
these actions leave traces, which means that these traces can be detected. Accordingly ,
it is quite possible to identify preparations for aggression some time before it begins.
What happens during the SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT phase? Before starting
implementation, the aggressor needs to understand how and on whom to influence in order
to achieve the desired result. To understand this, he will have to identify which target
audience needs "work".t " - who needs to be influenced. Or in other words, which group of
people should be encouraged to take the necessary actions for the aggressor. Whether
they are pensioners (in relation to Russian reality), or fans of sports clubs, or creacles). In other
words, you need to understand with whose hands you can more effectively achieve your
goal. For this purpose, research is conducted, which may include not only passive
observation and information collection, but also sociological surveys, working with focus
groups, and similar quite tangible actions. It is precisely to identify such actions that an
early warning system in the field of information warfare should be aimed.
After identifying the target audience, its vulnerabilities are identified - those that cause
the greatest emotions (corruption, social inequality, nationalism). From these topics

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

the most convenient ones for operation are selected. In addition,

these topics are being tested on a small scale at this stage. After all, you need to make
sure that the vulnerability works as the aggressor needs. This manifests itself in different
ways. For example, in the form of provoking discussion of the topic on forums, blogs,
and social networks. While locally-without artificial overclocking. And this can also be
identified. Next, we start PREPARING THE INFRASTRUCTURE. At this stage, among
other things, accounts are created for future dissemination of information. Since
accounts are designed to "overclock" a certain topic, they are most likely optimized for
this particular topic. This optimization is necessary to get the maximum effect out of them
and is expressed in the fact that the profile will use keywords that are inherent in the
planned topic. In the description of hobbies, in tags, or even in the nicknamee-mail of the
account. In addition, such accounts are embedded in the appropriate groups, loaded
with relevant content, etc. It is the mass appearance of accounts with specific
characteristics that is one of the signs of preparation for aggression.
Signs of preparing for war
In the monitoring process, as part of countering information wars, it is necessary
to constantly answer the same question : has an information attack started? To
be more precise, you need to understand what is actually happening on the basis of
monitoring data at any given time . This is necessary to make a timely decision about
starting actions to repel an attack, prepare for repelling it, or correct actions that have
already been started. You can answer these questions by knowing the signs of certain
states - the very "weak signals" that we identify, we understand what is happening in the
information field. We will now talk about these signals or signs.
Surveys on sensitive topics
The emergence of various sociological services that study society (the target audience)
either from the point of view of its consolidation-disunity, or through questionnaires
that are clearly aimed at identifying topics of social tension (causing the most powerful
emotions,especially negative ones). Such surveys can be either explicit or implicit, when
the questionnaire is disguised as an interview, interview, etc.

They try to hide such studies for obvious reasons. And conduct them implicitly,
for example, by checking the "likability" of a particular demotivator on FB, VKontakte,
or another social network. And structures striving for world domination put such
research on stream. For example, since 2010, DARPA has been developing the
Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales program, which, among other things, is
designed toto identify anomalous processes occurring in society. Since the beginning
of 2011, the Pentagon has been developing the SMISC (Social Media in Strategic
Communication) system, which tracks all political discussions and determines whether
this is an accidental product of the collective mind or a propaganda operation by a
hostile nation or group. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a system that can
independently detect attempts at enemy manipulation and counteract it. And within
the framework of this project, a technology has been created to identify vulnerabilities
of the society of interest (target audience), which can then be used for impact.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Testing painful topics

After identifying the vulnerabilities of society, calibration is necessary - checking
whether these topics are really so significant. You can get an answer to this question only
by checking your conjectures in a real situation. For example, by raising such a topic on
a forum and tracking user reactions. It is the appearance of such topics "suddenly" or
"out of nowhere" that is another sign that preparations are underway. Such topics may
be created for the first time, or, more often, old topics with appropriate content are
brought up. Mass appearance of accounts with specific characteristics
After desk and field research, the attacker needs to create the infrastructure
for a future attack (unless they already have one). But even those who are constantly
engaged in information wars on the Internet are forced to continuously replenish their
fleet of bots. This kind of infrastructure preparation involves creating accounts in various
social networks (in the broadest sense of the word), linking them together according to
the"manager - managed" scheme, setting up cross-posting, etc.It is advisable to create
the accounts themselves not "from the lantern", but by putting in the profile those
keywords that will later be used for information impact. This will make search engine
optimization easier and increase your seeding performance . It is the simultaneous (or
short-term) appearance of a large number of accounts with thematic keywords in the
settings that is a sign of preparation for an information war. Thematic keywords are
placed in the description of hobbies, hobbies, addictions, in the tags of future
publications, and even in the nickname of the account. Signs of the outbreak of war
Bursts
And detection of the beginning of an attack is carried out by quite understandable signs:
an increase in negative activity in painful (and for the enemy in shock) topics, an
increase in the number of surrogates in negative statements, etc.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

A sharp increase in references to an Item indicates that there is interest in it (natural

or artificial). Such a spike is an indication that something is wrong, something has
changed, and suddenly, very quickly. Of course, this may not be an attack. But it is better
to count a couple of such bursts as an attack and "work out" them, rather than skip the
one that really is a threat.
Much more significant is the sharp increase in negative statements about the
Object. Such growth is already an alarm signal in itself, and if its artificial nature is revealed, it is
an unambiguous indication that an information attack has begun against the Object.

Artificiality of the wave

The question is, how do you determine that a negative outburst is artificially
created? The answer itself is simple - the presence of accounts among the
distributors of information, which are bots or trolls, and there is an indication that the
surge of negativity is someone's artificial creation. And the point here is that bots
themselves or their rental cost money, as well as the publications of trolls who spent
resources on reaching the thousands. And they don't just spread information.

It is equally important to understand how many bots and trolls should be considered sufficient to
claim that an attack has begun? The answer is not so simple. The fact is that for objects that are barely
noticeable in the media sense, the appearance of a single bot in the distribution of negative information
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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

this is already an indicator of the wave's artificiality. And for an object that is mentioned
several hundred times every day, the appearance of several bots among the negative distributors
is not a reason to panic. Simply because bots need to constantly give the appearance
of humanity. And for this purpose, among other techniques, reposting of popular news is also
used. And your object might have been hit by accident. Therefore, for media objects, you need to
enter a threshold of 2-3 % of the total number of negative messages (very conditional).
The next problem is how to determine
that a negative message is posted by a bot.

Signs of bots
There is one special feature in the definition of bots - the lack of an unambiguous answer to the
question, is it a bot or not a bot? This state of affairs is due to the fact that an accurate answer can
only be given by controlling the account itself, and only its owner has this opportunity. Therefore,
we use the concepts of fuzzy logic. And the evaluation system itself is close in its essence to the
scoring system, when decision-making is carried out on the basis of a set of features, and not on
a single indicator. And you need to implement it exactly this way-by defining the listb indicators
and evaluating their weight in the final assessment.
Static attributes
Static attributes include account design features, such as how fully
the data is entered, what data is used for registration, and so on.Let's look at some examples
of such attributes.
Correct spelling of the name - use of non-names in the account name. This is a sign that
is alarming in itself and is only used to determine it in combination with other
signs as an additional factor. However, if you already have identified bots, and the name
of the account under investigation differs from them by +1, then this is most likely a bot.
The presence of an account's publications - if you don't write anything yourself, but only comment
on other people's posts, then this is another sign of botniness. Often, such publications are made
to imitate life, but they are duplicates of existing ones and/or "off-topic". The most commonly used
indicator is the ratio of incoming messages to outgoing messages or comments to
posts.
The presence and content of the photo is also an additional sign of the"bot" account. The
content of the photo is also important, but it is quite difficult to formalize the procedure for such
an assessment. Matching different profile data to each other. It is
especially interesting to correlate dates with each other. For example, the date of birth and the date
of the beginning and end of training at school or university. In the rush of registration (and bot
accounts are created more often in a hurry), they often make mistakes, and then it turns out that
you went to school at the age of four or 11… Of course, this is not an unambiguous indicator, but
only one more point in the scoring system for evaluating loyalty. Account creation date, when you
need to create a lot of bots, they are created at the same time, and by proximity of the creation
date (or its coincidence), you can identify bots that are part of the same groupcreate a group
(managed by a single bot driver or participating in the same project). But the creation date
itself is an additional sign - if the account was created a few days ago, then there is less trust in it.
An interesting indicator is the ratio of the duration of the account's existence (date
of creation) to its activity (number of posts or comments). After all, if the account
was registered a few days ago, but there are already a couple of thousand comments, then this
is unusual, although it is possible. The number of friends is also an interesting
indicator. After all, if a person does not have any friends, even if they are virtual, but at the same
time they actively communicate (comment), then this is not quite normal. Therefore , it is also
not the number of friends that is interesting, but its relationship with the duration of the account's
existence, the number of publications, and the number of comments (incoming and outgoing).

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Total profile occupancy - whether all the profile items are filled in. You need to create
a lot of bots, and therefore there is no time or desire to fill out a profile. A minimum of data
is entered, only those that are necessary for registration and operation.
Behavioral signs
This type of attribute includes those features that are characteristic of the actions
of the account under study. Participation
in the artificial promotion of materials earlier indicates that this account is most
likely a bot. There are cases when people "rent out" their real account to automatically
distribute certain information, but they are rare. For this purpose, there are peculiar
exchanges. Another option is when someone's real account is "hijacked", or they pick
up a password and, without advertising it, use it to spread information. But in all
such cases, this is already a bot. A normal person
can't.send comments at a rate of 1 comment per second. At a minimum, you need to read
what you are commenting on, formulate the answer and type it on the keyboard. Under the
most favorable conditions, this will take about ten seconds. For this reason, by the way,
the indicator based on the ratio of the comment rate to the length of the comment
itself is more accurate. Comments from different accounts from the same IP in a short
period of time. We are talking about a situation where the comments of one publication (for
example, in a blog) "left a trace" of several accounts in a short period of time and all from
the same IP address. This is a clear indication that these accounts are managed from
the same computer (service) or through a single proxy server. The content of comments
can also indicate their inhumanity - for example, primitive comments ("+100500", "afftar
zhzhot", "kill apstena"). Of course, this can also be written by a person, and therefore
this is only an additional sign. Another option is "off-topic" comments, when the content
of the comment does not correspond to the content of the conversation. Another option is
exact duplicates of other comments, especially when a comment is duplicated many times
(dozens, hundreds of duplicates) in a short period of time. But here you need to take into
account such a phenomenon as quotes. There are enough examples when a certain short
statement is liked by the public, and it is people who start distributing it, duplicating it.

Counteraction techniques
Since the "work" is carried out by you in the information field, then the technologies will be
the same as those of your opponent.
Discrediting
Discrediting ( fr. Discrediter-to undermine trust) - deliberate actions aimed
at undermining authority, image and trust (http://ru.wikipedia.org). In our case , this means
discrediting the author of a negative publication or the site where the publication is placed
in the eyes of readers. Discrediting a site is useful if there is more than one material
on it and/or there is a high probability that new materials on the topic will appear on this
site. Or when the author of the publication is not specified. In this case, trust in the source
of information itself is undermined. In fact, as a result,you need to ensure that the reader
does not take seriously what the author (site) publishes. This is where it makes sense
to focus your efforts, and not on trying to justify yourself. It is pointless to make excuses
- you will only add reasons to believe the opponent, and not you. Here the principle "once
justified, then guilty" will work. In addition, as a result of making excuses, you will give your
opponent extra information channels to mock you. Therefore, we do not waste our energy
in vain, but show the true face of the opponent. Moreover, we use his own technology-we
accuse him, and let him now launder. But I remind you that the accusation should come
from anyone, but not from you and not from an object that can be associated with you.

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Disclosure of compromising material

Here everything is simple - if you have information about something negative, illegal,
immoral in relation to the object-it should be made public. And with a reservation like "

well, if THIS is IT, then how can you even believe him?".
Publishing virtual compromising material
If there is no real compromising material, then they invent it (create the appearance of its
presence). The easiest way is to come up with something and publish it. But it is better if this
something has partial confirmation, then more readers will believe it.
Negative praise
This action implies a public pohthe shaft of the discredited object. The specifics
lie in HOW they were praised or WHO they were praised by. As for HOW they were praised ,

this is a clear over-praise. For example, excessive use of various laudatory epithets without
confirmation of facts, praise for what they did not do, praise interspersed with negativity… The
second component is WHO praises you. If the praise comes from
an object that is perceived negatively by the audience, it is more likely to have a negative
character as well. Destroying virtual concepts
Virtual, i.e. "living" only in our minds, concepts are such as prestige,
universality, authority, popularity, significance, etc. These concepts have
a certain value for people's self-esteem. And by questioning the credibility or
prestige of an author or source, you can achieve various results from the author's
nervousness to the loss of trust in him on the part of readers.
Unmotivated booing
This is nothing more than expressing a negative opinion about the text, illustration, author
, or resource itself. Everything from the banal "yes, this is nonsense" to accusations of
plagiarism, lack of education, hypocrisy-anything is suitable here. The main thing is that
these accusations should be widespread. And then the reader will think - "since so many
people think so..." - the herd feeling will work.
Public outrage
This method is similar to unmotivated booing in its organization. But here
we use an appeal to other social feelings of readers. "This is a violation of all
moral norms", "this is outrageous","what right does he have?" - familiar phrases? But they
can be used in relation to anyone.
Blurring a negative image
Blurring or dissolving a negative image means generating neutral or positive
information about the object in volumes that exceed the volume of negative information. In fact,
this is the"noise" of negative information. The main question is how much or how
much the number of neutral and positive mentions should exceed the number of negative
mentions. There is no universal answer.
For example, if you find that 10 negative mentions of an item appear per day
, then you need to create (initiate, generate...) 30, 40, or even 50 non-negative mentions during
the same day . And so on every day until new negative
mentions stop appearing.
Distraction
Divert your opponent's resources to another war.
Resources are always limited, and therefore it is possible to reduce the" power "of
information impact on the object by stimulating the "negative generator" for other activities.

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For example, to repel an information attack on them or to

protect their ward object… Depending on the specifics of such
a counterattack, its result can be either "local" or strategic.

Distracting the audience to a new sensation.

You can also divert the audience's attention to something more interesting, sensational, or
important. This is something more interesting to create (initiate) or create its visibility. This
technology works well for a short period of time - about one to three days.
If there is a need to prolong the result, then a sequence
of sensations is necessary. They can also be created artificially.
Distraction from an insignificant fact in the context of the current problem
An even more subtle way of distracting yourself is through concentrationfocus the
audience's attention on points that are not fundamental for you (the object) within the
framework of the problem voiced by the opponent. In fact, this may be a diversion of the
discussion or a substitution of concepts, but in the end, the participants in the conversation
focus on facts that are not important to you within the framework of the problem being
discussed. Driving to the point of absurdity
A fairly effective method based on" developing immunity " in the audience to negative
information about the object. It is necessary to teach the audience that the negative is there,
but it is false. This effect is achieved in various ways. The easiest way is to spread
information about possible negative options in advance, explaining that " without
understanding the problem, some people start telling different stories like this and this one..."
If such an immunization was not carried out in time or it did not give a result,
then you can hypertrophie the existing negative to fantastic and obviously
impossible sizes, adding also the one you invented. And tell all this to users with the words
"and we also worship an alien devil and eat babies...". The presence of obvious
delusions will provoke the audience to perceive the rest of the negative as delirium.
Another way to make it absurd is to collect all the negative information about
an object and distribute it, changing the name of the object to other names (
names). Any normal person, seeing this, will consider the authors of the texts not
quite normal, and the materials are lies. Including your opponent's materials.
Remember the situation with the statement about the alleged discovery of a
submarine in coastal waters . At first, it was claimed that this was a submarine of the Ministry of
Defense of the Russian Federation. A good way to make this information absurd was found.

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Working on the map item's image

Perhaps the mostthe most effective way to prevent negativity (or rather, its consequences),
and not just fight it, is to actively form the image of the protected object. Create
and spread positive messages about the object. Talk more actively about positive
things, discuss on forums, communicate with supporters... Make grateful reviews from
supporters, statements of support for allies… Promote your point of view, optimize
the resources controlled by the object, and perform search engine optimization…

Text generation
Before you can start distributing information, you need to create it. In our case, we are talking
about texts that will become the basis for your opposition.
Principles
Brevity
The difficulty of forming texts lies in the fact that the texts should be "catchy", i.e. the
reader should be interested in what is written, even if he is far from the topic. And interest in
the first lines of this text, so that the reader wants to read to the end. And at the same time the
material should be short - no more than half a page. In the extreme case -
one page. Keep in mind that you are targeting people who are completely out of the loop, and
to keep their attention, the material should be short. This is the first requirement for
creating texts.

Confidence level
The second requirement for such texts is accuracy of the information provided. If
the information does not correspond to reality, then sooner or later the opponent will
find this discrepancy and use this fact to discredit both the material itself and all other
materials on the principle of "once lied...". The only situation in which the use of an unreliable
situation can be justified is to gain an advantage in a short period of time and
while maintaining anonymity.osti of the information distributor. For example, when
diverting the opponent's resources for a short period of time from the main direction.
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Humor
Funny material is much easier for people to perceive. I always like the positive more than
something serious and, especially, than the negative. Moreover, such material is remembered
better and you want to share it with others. Information begins to spread itself. These
properties define humor as one of the priority properties of generated materials in
information warfare.
Severity
But there are situations when you can't use humor. For various reasons, but you can't. Then
the material should be serious, sustained and very specific.
Messages (thoughts)

Since it is necessary for the user to read the material, the text material itself should
not be very long. Maximum of one page, preferably half. Moreover, the text should not be
complicated, as in a detective story. We need a clear and understandable sequence
of presentation. The reader should not make any extra effort to understand what is written.
In addition, the text should not contain many "main thoughts". The very " meanings "(ideas)

that you want to convey to the reader. There should be no more than three of them. This is the
maximum. And the ideal option is one. In this case, the reader is more likely to remember it,
understand it, and think about it.
Keywords
It goes without saying that the text you create should contain the keywords that you
use to promote your content in search engines. Where would you go without them?
Insults
In any case, do not use insults in your texts - you do not need to give your opponent
an additional opportunity to counter you. And insults are just such
an opportunity. However, there are cases when insults are used. For example, to divert
your opponent's resources. This is when you need your opponent to spend some of their energy
and resources fighting "windmills" and weaken the information pressure on your Object.
Excuses
Excuses are perceived by the audience as confirmation of wrongness. Moreover, the opponent
can interpret your excuse as "the thief is on fire and the hat is on fire" - this is an additional
argument in his favor. So don't make excuses.
Composure
It is important not to give in to emotions in the course of information counteraction. Emotions are
a bad adviser, and often a way to push you to make a fatal mistake. If you've just seen a
negative comment about yourself and immediately want to respond , stop. Answer a simple
question: how will the world change if you don't answer right now, but do it tomorrow or not at all?

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Visualization
This requirement is placed in the last place, but it is not the last, but one of
the main ones. The fact is that visual material is perceived much
faster by a person. Such material has an additional impact and is better remembered. Therefore
, the text should be accompanied by an image, and don't forget to add keywords to the properties of this
image .Even better, if there is video material. And if the video material with the appropriate sound series,
then this is just great.
Content generation techniques
As such, there are few techniques for creating content. This is creating a new one and using
the existing one. But there are a number of "modifications" of these techniques. Creating unique content it
can be implemented by a human "writer", actually composing a text, drawing a picture,
shooting a video. Or program-auto-generation, when a new text or drawing is created
by the program based on a random selection of images. Other direction - creating
pseudo-unique content, which is expressed in the modification (modification) of the existing content
(sample) for new tasks. It can also be implemented both by a person and programmatically.
Third direction - using ready-made content. In this
case, you can create a library of content for different predicted trends. Or
"mirroring". Basically, how work is carried out in one direction or another is clear
from the names, with the exception of a few techniques that make sense to analyze in a little
more detail.

Autogeneration
Automatic content generation, or the creation of a unique text by a
program, involves the complexity of teaching the machine to create
relatively long, meaningful texts that mimic direct speech or literary language.
Small meaningful texts (up to 30 sentences) with a strict structure
("dry") are already used to generate current sports and financial news.

Generating pseudo-unique content

Pseudo-unique content generation is limited to using a set of templates and synonym
dictionaries to create relatively new short texts (usually in one sentence) for a specific situation.
In the early 90s, the "Bredogenerator" was popular-a program that combined data from
three dictionaries (the dictionary of subjects,predicates, and determinants) to form quite
meaningful sentences. Then there was an "autoresponder for ICQ", which did not generate
new answer options, but selected them from the database of ready-made answers using a
simple algorithm. All these are examples aboutmultiple pseudo-unique text generators.

Mirroring
One of the most common ways to create content is to use ready -made
content created by the enemy, but with a small adjustment, figuratively
speaking, changing the "general content sign" (from minus to plus or vice
versa). Recently, there have been many examples of using this technique. It
is enough to recall the use by the Ukrainian side of photos of frozen ATO
fighters (the pictures were passed off as photos of the defenders of Donbass).

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Ways to disseminate information

The final question of the topic (but not technology) is how to distribute texts with your
opinion? The question, for all its apparent simplicity, is fraught with a number of pitfalls.
First, you need to remember that this very text for distribution, which you so painstakingly
made, is just one of the tools of information warfare. Although very important, it is one of
the best. Secondly, this text was created not for the sake of creating it, but for the sake of
influencing the target audience through it. And the more effective it will work (in most
simple cases), the greater the reach of this target audience. And third, as a consequence
of the previous paragraphs, the text itself will not do anything - it needs to be distributed
as widely as possible. Or not widely, but so that it is guaranteed to reach those to whom it
is intended. Based on this, we will consider how you can distribute your wonderful text on
the Internet. "Direct" distribution methods
These methods are called direct methods because you publish
(distribute) information yourself.
Blogs
Blogs are the most powerful resource for promoting text, and with it, your idea. This is
due to several operating systemsabout blog permissions. The first is the simplicity and
speed of creation. If you don't claim exclusivity, then a blog with a third-level domain is
created within a few minutes. You can create an unlimited number of such blogs. The
price of the issue is only the cost of time (those very few minutes), and in some cases the
cost of a new SIM card (when registration is linked to confirmation of identity via a mobile
phone number). Second ,in a blog, you decide what to post and what not to post, what
comments to leave and what to delete - you, not someone else.
Just a cursory study of, for example, a domestic blog hosting service called LJ
(also known as LJ) is enough to see how blogs are actively used for information wars.
Take the top magazines and see the most commented topics. Pay special attention to the
meaning of comments and the speed of their appearance. Very interesting conclusions
suggest themselves. And when the data obtained are superimposed on the" habitat " of
commentators (what topics and where they comment), the conclusions become even
more specific. Regular Blog
A regular blog is a blog created on specialized blog hosting sites (LiveJournal, uCoz,
etc.). Блоги@Mail.Ru, LiveInternet, Acars.ru, BabyBlog.ru, Blogger.com etc.). It's free
and fast. Such a blog has a third-level domain, but despite this, the "big" Internet search
engines monitor such blog hosting sites very carefully, and your publication will be in their
output in a few hours at the latest. And with some tweaks - in less than an hour.
Blog on a separate domain
For this type of source, you must rent a domain name and hosting service. At current
prices, this is from 4.5 thousand rubles a year. Also not very expensive. But such a blog
will be located on a second-level domain, which is a sign of greater popularity for
searches.source details. Otherwise, this is the same blog as those that are located on
specialized sites. Microblogs
These are blogs with a limited length of posts. In fact, these are text messages for
everyone (Twitter, Rutwitt, Juic, FriendFeed, DUDU, <url>, etc.). In our case, they are
useful not as a place to spread ideas, but as a means of optimizing other sites. For
example, to distribute the title of a post on the main blog with a link to it, to attract
attention, and so on.

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How to use blogs

Managing Blog
This is a blog that is used to manage the distribution of content. The scheme is simple -

the necessary material is published on the management blog, and already with the help of RSS feeds,
bots ,and trolls involved in the event, the material is repeatedly duplicated, distributed
further, and commented on. Often, the management blog is made "closed" (visible
only to friends). Such a scheme is needed to complicate the calculation of the network, its nodes and
the development of measures to counter you.
Promoted Blog
This is a blog used to promote content in the TOP search results.
Relevant links are made to this blog, which promotes it to the top of search engine results for your
keyword. Sometimes several such blogs are created (if the budget allows), which
significantly increases the impact. In simple cases, the managed and promoted blogs
are the same, but this is suitable for simple cases.
Support Blog
Support blogs are used to repeatedly duplicate content and create relevant
links to a promoted blog or other promoted page on the Internet. In addition,
support blogs are used to comment on and promote content in the TOP
poptransparency (debatability).

Kamikaze blogs
Their purpose is to quickly influence the situation. Quickly publish the material, create the first
link mass, provoke discussion, divert attention, etc., so that you have
a small margin of time to create the minimum infrastructure to repel
an attack. Since the task of such blogs is to influence the situation for a day, at most two, then there
are no special requirements for their adaptation to the requirements of search engines in terms of the
"humanity" of the material . The main thing is to quickly place information (shock, distracting,
provoking, masking).
Blog Comments
Comments are also important for promoting your content. After all, you can also
express an idea in the comments. Moreover, you can also make a link in the comments. And this is not
all - comments affect the position in the discussion rating. And this means an additional influx of
readers and additional duplication of sources that are no longer related to you. But this is not
all - the number of comments to the material (according to rumors) is also taken into account by search
engines and affects their output. Often, comments contain more material than the main
(commented) text.
"Disguised" blogs
These blogs mimic each other. Some blogs pretend that they are interested in a certain topic, gain
fans of this topic as friends, authority from search engines, link mass... And on the day of "H" they
start publishing materials that their owner needs. And they are already being read, quoted, and
referenced.... Exactly the same scheme is used to create communities or groups in social networks. At
first , this group is fans of something harmless and generally accepted, and after recruiting the right
number of readers (or on the appointed day), the admin of the group changes its name and "shock"
content to the one he needs, and now a group with 100 thousand users has appearedcompanies that
demand the resignation of the government. And users do not even know that they are members of
such a group. Another option for disguised blogs is to create a diary ostensibly in support of your
opponent. Such a blog allows you to identify sympathizers of the opponent, their training, their
resources, etc . Moreover, such a blog can seriously demoralize the opponent, when at the most
inappropriate moment it starts broadcasting completely not in his favor. Or if on it accidentally and indirectly

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information will start to appear that somehow compromises the opponent and pushes
his audience to doubt.
Compromising material sites
Sites that post negative content. There are quite enough of them, both
global (about everyone), local (by topic, by region...) and personal (compromising information on
a specific person or company). Their purpose is quite specific - the legalization of materials.
In other words, give the manipulator the opportunity to refer to some source, call it
the original source and not be responsible for slander, because it was not the first one to publish
it. Your opponent can use already existing compromising sites, or they can create their own ones
specifically for information warfare with you.
Clone sites
An exact copy of a site that is popular with your target audience. Sometimes this
technique is used to remove the "barrier of distrust" - it seems that information came from a
trusted source … Outwardly, it looks exactly like the" same " site, and few people pay
attention to the address bar.
Fake sites
A type of clone site is a copy of the site that you want to compromise or
use to mislead the target audience. Knowingly false or
provocative information is postedthis means that the audience no longer trusts the source. Very
common in social networks. These are so-called fake accounts. Created an account on behalf of
your opponent (it seems like he created it), started posting first true and interesting
information, typed in "friends", along with finding out "who is for him", and then started posting
information discrediting the opponent. And if the falsity of the account is not revealed , some of
your opponent's supporters are disappointed in it.
Comments to articles
Most online media outlets publish materials and allow users to comment on them
. This is a kind of feedback from the audience and an attempt to understand what users
are interested in and why. This can and should be used to spread information -

comments are also indexed by search engines, which means that they can contain
useful information, including links, images...
Forums
Forums are a separate big "piece" of the Internet that allows people to communicate.
There are a lot of such platforms: from "all about everything" to narrow-topic ones. Since forums
are intended for communication, they should be used both to spread information and links, and
to gain supporters, to provoke discussions, including emotional ones, to
identify supporters of the opponent...
Communication for links
The purpose of such "communication" is to make links to the promoted resource. That is, to
implement its search engine optimization and at the same time lure people from this forum there.
But you need to remember that recently the registration of links from forums has been reduced
to a minimum, nevertheless, search engines click on them , and people click on them, and links
from "authoritative" forums for search engines are still taken into account when ranking pages.
But to work effectively on forums, you need to follow some guidelinese rules. For example, you
don't need to engage in explicit spam - no one likes it, and you will be quickly banned.
Therefore, you need to choose a forum "branch" that suits you on the topic and place a reasonable
post with the material you need in it. As they say, your remark should be "in the subject",
and not "from the ceiling". Only in this case, your material has a chance to stay on the forum.

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

Communication for the sake of spreading the idea

In this case, the goal is to get supporters of your idea (by persuading, explaining,
provoking), and they will already find the necessary material themselves.
Features
When working on the forum, there are a number of features that need to be taken into
account. The first is your profile. You need to fill out your profile with information relevant
to your legend and using the keywords that you plan to use to promote
your material (if you plan to). Make sure to use tags that should also contain
your keywords. Don't forget about the caption that will be placed at the end of each of
your posts - it should also be made appropriate to your legend and
the material you promote.
And make the messages themselves interesting, not boring (very few people like nerds,
and therefore users are also repelled by the idea promoted by the nerd). Therefore, do
not try to "hammer in" something to the interlocutor with each post. It is much more
effective to attract attention and enlist support through help.
Creating multiple accounts (virtual personalities) and distributing
information through communication between them works well. Of course, keep in mind
that moderators will quickly detect such "promotion" if you don't take some
anonymization measures. At a minimum, each virtual machine must work from its own
IP-adresa. Guest books
These are reviews on the site, where you can also leave links and opinions, conduct
discussions, and share data. Live ad platforms usually have pre-moderation or
post-moderation that you need to take into account.
Even old guest books that have not been updated for a long time are useful - after all,
they have been on the Internet for a long time, and therefore they are a very
authoritative source for search engines (based on the old age of content). And this
circumstance should be used. Publication Services
There are various services for publishing material. From one-time ones (like leaving them as
a keepsake) to long-term ones. From the point of view of information warfare, their
functionality is similar to blogs (but much simpler). They also need to be used. An example
of such a service is Ontex.info Bookmark Services
These are online services for storing interesting bookmarks. They can be standalone or
embedded in other services, simple or complex. But all of them are actively tracked by
search engines because, in their opinion, they indicate what interests people most.
Therefore, such services are very useful for search engine optimization of promoted
content. Bookmarks should be made "open" (accessible to everyone), and their name
becomes the link keyword. Therefore, you need to think through the name of the
bookmark you are creating and include your keywords in it. Moreover, bookmarks have
tags that are also links and keywords. But that's not all. Commenting on bookmarks is
also anchor words, links, and user opinions that search engines take into account.
Photo hosting sites
Photo hosting sites are also a good tool for promoting your content. In addition
to relevant links to "shock" content, you can use photo hosting sites to fill
in the "image search" section of the search engine with the necessary materials.output
systems. Which also helps in promoting the idea.
For effective use of photo hosting sites, you need to keep in mind some features. So,
the album name must contain your keywords, as well as tags for publications.
Captions to photos should also contain the same keywords. And don't forget

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

commenting on photos is also a way to spread ideas and search

engine optimization of high-impact content.
SMM Services
Social media marketing (SMM) - the process of attracting attention to a brand or product
through social platforms (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing ). In other
words, these are technologies for spreading information through social services on the
Internet. Through direct provision of information, through communication, through various
types of user involvement. In fact, it is a tool for advertising, PR, and social media marketing.
It is based on the desire of people to communicate in combination with the convenience of
such communication on the appropriate platforms. But this is exactly what is needed to
conduct an information war and to counter information wars. But live and truthful
communication has long given way to technological manipulation techniques. The following
are examples of the most commonly used technologies. They are illustrated with some real
services, one at a time, so as not to spread information about them too actively.
Exchanges
Let's start with the fact that one person can't create a lot of unique content quickly and
easily. And look at bloggers who are in the top of search engines or blog hosting sites. Pay
attention to the frequency of appearance of new materials, their volume, depth of
development, and the frequency of comments on your own and other people's publications.
In my opinion, even if you only do one blog and don't get distracted by anything else, you
still won't be able to write so much and quickly. So it's not just one person doing it.
It is clear that an unlimited number of people can publish their materials in one blog, but
it is easier to order such materials without losing control over your blog. For this purpose,
there are relevant exchanges - specialized sites where you can buy the material you like
or order material on a specific topic.
Moreover, on such exchanges, you can also buy a repost of your material on behalf of other
bloggers, which will increase the authority of your blog. And you can buy an unlimited
number of comments to your material on behalf of other bloggers. At the same time, you can
choose which bloggers will comment and what kind of comments they will leave. For
example, you can restrict the geography or language of comments, and specify which
keywords should be included in such comments. And the tone of the comments themselves
can be ordered. For example, praising the merits of someone, or, conversely, criticizing
something… It's just a matter of your budget. How long do you think it will take to bring your
blog from a newly created state to the TOP of search engines using such exchanges?
Provided that the funds are sufficient. And what it means to get into the TOP search results
in terms of influencing the audience, you already know...
In addition, on such exchanges, you can buy the required number of accounts in any
services, or order their creation. However, there is no guarantee that these accounts (which
you will order or on behalf of which information will be distributed) will be "clean", and not
hacked. There are quite a lot of such services (exchanges) on the Internet. They position
themselves as a service for SMM, but this is not the casedual-use technologies. Here is an
example of how such services are positioned:
"Fill your website, blog, or online store with content.
Bring your forum to life.
Trigger user activity.
Reposts and likes on social networks.
Support for any CMS.
Traffic from our exchange is not recorded by counters.
Meaningful publications without grammatical errors.
Checking comments before making a payment."
Examples of such services:

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"Information warfare technologies on the Internet" I. Y. Nezhdanov

http://qcomment.ru/
http://wpcomment.ru/
http://www.rotapost.ru/
http://buylike.ru/
https://socialtools.ru/
These are only those that "came to hand", and there are many
more of them. Here are some examples of exchanges
that specialize in selling accounts: http://www.buy-ak.ru/
http://www.inviter.ru/
http://akkaynt.net/

Cross-posting
Cross-posting on the Internet - deliberate automatic, semi-automatic or manual
placement of the same article, links or topics in forums, blogs, or other forms of
websites or public correspondence, including in online communication (for
example, IRC, CommFort, Skype) (wikipedia.org ). This is nothing more than repeated
duplication of content. It is necessary, for example, for "seeding", when
there is a need to distribute the same material on behalf of a large number of
users. For this purpose, specialized services are used from simple (working with
one social network) to complex (covering many social networks and providing
additional services). Examples of such solutions: http://www.pistonposter.com
http://novapress.pro/
http://www.prpilot.ru/
http://socialpilot.ru/
http://sociate.ru/
https://www.buzzlike.pro/

Account management services

Another interesting service that is positioned as an SMM tool is the account management
service. His idea is, that the user has one account in each of the most popular social
networks and does not want to spend a lot of time posting the same material there, there and there…
It is much more convenient to do this by pressing a single button, and it is better not to
press it at all-automatically. The material appeared in the "management" account, and
immediately the system published it in the controlled services. But this is the same "seed" in
information wars… Especially when you consider that you can create many accounts and
sync them through the managing blog. Example of such a service http://feedman.ru/ or
https://time2post.ru/
Bots
The bot (English bot, abbreviated as bot). from robot, bot) - a program that automatically
performs actions on the computer instead of people http://lurkmore.to/%c1%ee%f2 . Yes -
these are programs that allow you to automate the process of distributing information in social
networks. For example, by publishing content on behalf of a large number of different users.
Or "cheat" likes… An interesting example of such programs is the solutions of developers
from http://viking-studio.com/ And there are also such "online bots" http://pamani.ru/

Technical issues
SEO optimization
How does a person search for the information they need on the Internet? The most obvious
way is to use search engines: set a query in them using keywords. In this case,

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The search engine returns a result with the first lines containing the content that the
search engine thinks best matches your query. Corresponding to your
query in the form of keywords. Actually, these very keywords are the basis on which
all manipulations with getting to the first page of search engine results are built.
Keywords and links to the promoted site. Exactly withbuilding such a combination of links and
keywords that will put the site in the first lines of search engine results is called SEO or
search engine optimization (if quite simply).
Search engine optimization plays an important role in information warfare. For example , if
your opponent is a certain citizen with a Surname, First Name and Patronymic, then "opening
the eyes of the world" to who he really is, you need to make sure that when searching for this
Surname, Estate, Patronymic , people first come across a site with this very information (who
is he on actually). To do this, you need to create or select a page with such material and use
search engine optimization to bring it to the first lines of search engine output by Last Name,
First Name, Patronymic. Recently, " big " search engines one after another announce the
search and application of a certain algorithm for determining the most relevant material
without taking into account links to it. In general, the ranking algorithm is one of the most
protected secrets in the work of search engines. After all, as soon as it becomes generally known,
it will immediately become clear how to bypass it and put your own material in the first lines of the
output, and not the one that corresponds more to the user's request. And it is with this in mind
that you need to take all such statements of large search engines. So, the new algorithm is
supposedly based on the procedure for determining the authority of the source and finding the
original source of information that interests the user. What is the original source? - correct -
this is the required information with the earliest publication date. Have you ever noticed that,
for example , in LiveJournal, you can set the publication date yourself and indicate it does not
quite correspond to reality? In general, there is a lot to think about in the area of influencing
these new algorithms.we are search engines. But links also remain an important component of
determining the degree of relevance of information. Only now has their "quality" become more
important, i.e., matching the search engine's idea of the importance (completeness, authority,
humanity) of information. For example, links made from a unique
thematic text come out on top. While links from repeatedly duplicated content get
the lowest impact factor. Such types of links as likes
(yes, these are also links) or "like" or "share" are becoming more "influential"...
And now, very briefly, without too much bombast, what is this very
search engine optimization? Let's start with a reminder that search engine optimization is
a constant struggle of search services. They try to "calculate" optimization based on various
criteria, and sites suspected of optimization are threatened with removal from search engine
results. There are loud statements by the administration of search engines that they have
found a universal algorithm, but the situation remains the same as before.
Site content
As mentioned above, one of the main components of search engine optimization is
keywords that should be contained in the text elements of the promoted page. The
same keywords that people use to search for information about "your" problem. These
keywords must be included in the main text (in your story), and
they must be included in the first paragraph, in the title of the material and in the page title, in
the names of images that are used in the material. If the
number of keywords in the titles is more or less clear - once. Then here in the main text you
can vary. And the question arises - how many times should keywords appear in the main text
(what should be their density)? After all, according to the search engine, the more of them - the
more your text corresponds to the topic of the keyword. Of course, you can make the entire
text consist of keywords, but search engines have learned to deal with such" optimization"
. Such a site will be awarded "penalty points" and thrown out of the search results. Therefore

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it is important not to cross the very border beyond which it is clear to search engines that
the text is optimized. There is no
clear recommendation in this matter, but rather you need to rely on naturalness and a
sense of proportion. If the use of the keyword naturally fits into the normal sound
of the sentence , you can use it. This technique is used: in the text about a certain object
(if the keyword is the name of the object), all pronouns pointing to this object (he,
him,him) are replaced with the full name of the object, i.e. the keyword. Another
aspect related to the main text of the site being optimized is its originality( uniqueness).
That is, the uniqueness of the text - the absence of a second similar text on the Internet.
This topic is very controversial. But we can definitely say that a unique text will give
a positive result in the psychological direction. Users are always interested in reading
something new, rather than repeating what they've already read. Therefore, a unique text,
all other things being equal, has an additional plus. But creating unique
texts is quite troublesome. Therefore, they use some tricks. For example, the original
text is ordered from an external artist. Or they take someone else's material and retell
it in their own words. There is another way - someone else's material is taken (with a
link to the original) and something like an introduction-explanation-comment is made to it,
which gives some novelty. These resources are not promoted
by commercial keywords, i.e. not by the keywords that are being competed for. This
means that there are not a large number of resources that are "optimized" specifically
for these words. Most often, this is the full name of a certain person, and this combination
is not commercial. And if that's the case, then there's no need to make a significant
effort. Links and referring resources
Links are the second key component of optimization. It is based on the number of links to
the optimized resource that the search engine makes a decision about the value of this
resource for users. Particularly valuable, from the point of view of search engines, are
relevant links. A link is relevant if it uses your
keyword as the anchor word.
Links have their own form of writing (tags). An example of this is relevant links, provided
that the keyword is the phrase "competitive intelligence" <a href="http://ci2b.info/">
Competitive intelligence technologies for everyone This is exactly how links are present in
the HTML code. And it is in this form that they need to be created.
You can create such links to the promoted resource yourself. And the more such
links are recorded by the search engine, the higher the promoted site will be in the
search results for the keyword used. The logical question is how to make sure that there
are many such links? The question is also quite logical - to do it yourself. For example, in
the text of materials that you post on your blog, Twitter, or forum. But it is possible and not
in your bolg. More precisely, in a blog that doesn't seem to belong to you, but belongs to
you.the name of a certain virtual personality that you have created and control. And you
can create a lot of such blogs and forum accounts. This means that you will also have
a lot of places to create links . Another
important point is the presence of the same keywords (anchor words) in the text of the
page where your "promotion" link is located. The logic of search engines is simple - if the
referring page contains the same keywords as the promoted site, then it really matters
to people, which means that the weight of such a link increases. It is also important
to have links to each other sites that participate in the promotion of the main site.
This is due to the work of crawlers (robots that "walk" on sites and
index their content). In other words , if a link is found in the page being processed
, the robot will follow this link and see what is there. If the sites involved in
the promotion link to each other, the robot will crawl all of them every time, thereby
quickly updating the changes you create.

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The same value applies to "internal" site links - links to different pages on the same
site. Therefore, it is important to create high-quality tags, tables of contents, topics and
other "chips" of the site. By the way, it is also useful to use keywords in tags, tables of
contents, and topics. This increases their density and creates relevant links, even if they
are intra-site links. The age of a site also affects its" authority " among search engines -
the older the site, the more trust it has, and the faster it will get to the first pages of
search engines. Therefore, if you are constantly engaged in information wars, it is better
to make "preparations" for the future - make sites on a neutral topic and " supportkeep
them afloat." It is important that the site you are promoting does not contain links to
spammy resources or sites with illegal content. Such links for search engines are an
unambiguous sign for removing a resource containing such a link from the output.
There are a number of other factors that affect the promotion of the target site in one way
or another. For example, blogs used for promotion also need "static" links to the site
being promoted. These are links that point to the "My favorite pages" or "Must
-see" sections. They will be "shown" to Internet robots on every page of your blog, which
is good, and people will click on such links, which is also good for you.
Blogs used for promotion should have "friends" - in fact, these are additional
links to "allied" resources, which means an additional opportunity to keep the crawler's
"attention" on their resource.
Do not forget to fill out the blog profile, and fill it out with thematic words and , of
course, not with your own data. This will add more "humanity" to the blog and additional
bonuses for automated analysis systems.
Another important point is comments in blogs used for promotion. And these
comments should not only be thematic, but also contain your keywords. Such
comments make the blog even more "human" in the eyes of search engines. Moreover
, you can put relevant links in the comments that not only work for their intended
purpose, but are also perceived by crawlers as clearly links created by people, which
means they are more authoritative.
Rise to the top of search engines for positive information about yourself
By replacing negative information about yourself with positive information in search
results, you somehow "raise" positive information about yourself. Therefore, constant
work on creating positive information about yourself should become a habit - this should
be done regularly, if there is even the slightest suspicion of possible aggression.
Squeezing negative information about yourself out of the TOP search results
What to do if your full name is requested on the first page of search results, or even in
the first place, is exactly the same page? Remember HOW the right information is
promoted to the TOP of search engine results. By understanding this, you will understand
WHAT the aggressor did to achieve this result. Accordingly, it is clear WHAT you need to
do - create a resource with positive or neutral information that will be more relevant
to search engines than a resource with negative information. And then your resource will
become "higher" than the enemy's. For reliability, you need to create ten such resources -
to displace the negative from the entire first page of the search engine output.
But you don't need to create new pages with neutral or positive information. You can
use existing ones. In this case, it will be more difficult for your opponent to understand
what is happening. After all, if new pages "about nothing" appear and go to the TOP, then
these are clearly artificial actions. But when pages that have already existed for a long
time come to the TOP , it is already more difficult to understand what is happening.
We talked about HOW to bring the necessary pages to the TOP a little higher - links,
links, and links again. The main thing to remember is that you can leave these links in
many different places. From blogs, forums, and guest pages, to bookmarking services,
photo storage, and news publishing…

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Getting to the top of negative content about your opponent in search engines
Just like you "raised" positive information about yourself in search results, you
can also raise negative information about your opponent. What for? - it's very simple -
such actions will force them to divert some of their resources to deal with negativity about
themselves. And you will have more opportunities to cope with the situation.
Usually, you don't need to create a negative artificially - just carefully study the
opponent's tracks, and everything will be found. People themselves give enough reasons.
Squeezing out positive information about your opponent from TOP search engines
If you "raise" the negative about the opponent, then the positive about him will naturally
be squeezed down - just resources with a negative will occupy the top places. This is
again the "other side of the coin" - by doing one thing, you have an impact on the second.
Technical techniques (twitter, blogs, forums...)
The most obvious way to create relevant links to the desired resource is
to create such links yourself. And the most appropriate form for this is
blogs. First, the blog you create is controlled by you, not by anyone else. And you can
work with it as you like. Secondly, large blog hosting sites are "under the vigilant
control" of large search engines and are indexed by them quite regularly. And there is
one more thing - socialization of search engines. Looking for ways to counter optimizers,
search engines are increasingly giving importance to data from social networks. For
these reasons, your content will be indexed quickly, which is important when countering
information aggression. In addition, you can create an unlimited number of such blogs
- the main thing is not to get lost in them yourself. Also,
don't forget that you can comment on your posts and leave links in these comments,
which will also be taken into account by search engines. Moreover , comments will help
you promote your materand it is placed in the TOP of discussions, which will increase
the page traffic and attract the attention of more readers. But there is
one subtle point. Blogs on a blog hosting site are sites with a third-level domain. And such
sites for search engines are slightly less reputable than those located on a second-level
domain. For this reason, if you have time and a little money, it is better to create a main
blog (main site) on a separately rented domain. Links from such a blog site will
have slightly more weight when ranking with search engines.
Another productive way to distribute relevant links is to post them
in the comments section for thematic articles on the websites of news agencies,
specialized portals, etc. As a rule, such sites are long-standing and are recognized by
search engines as more authoritative sources. This means that links from them also gain
additional "weight" when ranking. They also attract an additional number
of users, which contributes to the dissemination of information.
Forums it can and should also be used to increase the number of links to the promoted
resource. But unlike the blogs you created, this is someone else's platform. This means
that the rules on this site are someone else's. And they may differ from the ones that are
convenient for you. For example, you may not be allowed to create links to external
resources. Or such links can be created by users with a certain level of" trust", which is
determined by the number of publications or by the time spent on the forum or individually
assigned by the moderator. In addition, forums, especially little-known ones, are much
less often indexed by search engines, and therefore a link to them may be involved in
ranking later than you want. However , you need to use forums forI create additional links
and get people familiar with your point of view.
Another "interesting" place for distributing links is guest books sites. These are places
where the site administration plans to post user reviews, communicate with them, and
so on. Links can also be placed in such sections. True, there are some of their own here

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difficulties. For example, the subject matter of the resource and moderation of the
content of such reviews. But, first, you can choose thematic sites, and secondly, you
can find "abandoned" sites that have not been updated for a long time and, most
likely, are no longer interesting to their creators. However , if they are not of interest
to the creators, this does not mean that you can not place links to them. In addition,
such sites, which have long been placed on the Internet, are quite authoritative for
search engines due to their age. This means that links from them also get "extra points".
If you think about it, you can find many places on the Internet where you can
leave links. For example, bookmark storage services - basically, a place intended
for links. And if these links are made publicly available, then they start working in the
right direction. News feeds social media users are another place to post
links. Or a variety of groups in these social networks.

Distribution of the material

Now a few words about how to distribute the information itself, not links to it. The purpose
of this action is to make the information disseminated available to as many
people as possible. This is the main task. And there are also auxiliary ones, which often
become the main ones. For example, creating visibility of the mass nature of a problem
discussionemail addresses. In other words, when it is necessary to give the impression
that IT is everywhere, that everyone is discussing IT and that IT is interesting and
important for everyone. Or when you need to create "information noise", in which the hidden
information would"drown" and no one would pay attention to it... "Seeding"
The word "seeding" in the appropriate environment refers to an event aimed at mass
dissemination of targeted information on the Internet. So to speak, spreading seeds over a
large area. The goals are described just above. But it makes sense to discuss technologies
separately. In general, the same techniques are used as when distributing links. The most
commonly used one is to create a large number of blogs and the distribution of the blank
by publishing it in these very blogs, in the comments to the blogs.
Open blog hosting sites are used for mass distribution.
Also used for "seeding" and comments to articles on portals that allow
you to comment on your content. Forums for "seeding", they are used much more actively,
since there is no need to insert links, which means that many restrictions of moderators do
not apply. Guest books they are also used for distribution, but their effectiveness is lower
due to the limited audience of such guest books.
But there are specialized platforms for publishing materials - the so-called publication
services. There are platforms for one-time publications, and some for regular ones. For"seeding"
is suitable and spam - e-mail newsletter. The main thing is to keep in mind the attitude of
users to spam and implement it with an "amendment" to this feature.
"Authoritative source"
A special technology for information dissemination is the creation of an"authoritative
source". This means creating a source, information on which is perceived
as valuable to users. It is clear that you will not be able to quickly create such a source. You
need to create it in advance and maintain its "authority" until the right moment, or even
longer. It depends on the chosen strategy. In fact, this is a multi-way combination of
disinformation.
Creating an "authoritative source" is associated with some features. The first is
anonymity. Most likely, you will not want the very material that the platform
was created to distribute to be associated with you in any way. Therefore, it is better
to initially make your relationship with such a resource closed from the public. The second is
the exclusivity of the material that will be posted. The material needs to be such that it
"catches" people. It is better if this material is unique. But it is possible and not unique, but

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organized in a way that makes it convenient for users to use it. At least,
it is more convenient than on other resources.
In addition, you need to make your" authoritative source " authoritative for search engines.
And on the topic with which you plan to "work" later. To do this, you need to do
its SEO optimization. This is all the same search engine optimization, content optimization,
and link mass. And also - regular updates - posting new, interesting materials and
discussions initiated by "someone" about materials from this source in social networks.
In about six months (if you actively promote such a source), it will become sufficiently
"known" and can be used for the main task. True, you will be sorry for your efforts to
"promote" it, but there's nothing you can do about it. But if used correctly in
an information war, such a source can be used as a source of information security.o make
it even more "authoritative", for example, due to the scandals that it covers, and even in
which it participates. The usual technology of show business.
"Communication" of two nicknames
Another actively used information dissemination technology is imitation
of human communication. On the forum, in the blog, in the comments… Two or more
accounts are created and communication between them is initiated using the very
information that needs to be distributed. Of course, this is not such a mass action
as"sowing". This is more of a pinpoint strike aimed at a very specific group of people. But
this technology allows you to overcome people's doubts about the information being
disseminated. The"eavesdropping" effect is triggered. It seems like strangers are
communicating, and I "overheard" their communication. They communicate with each other
, so they didn't intend to deceive me... In addition, people tend to trust people more than
news agencies, and even more so official statements. Therefore, if the information being
disseminated looks like two people are communicating, it is more likely to be perceived as
the Virtual identity
truth.
Why do we need virtual identities?
Another way to distribute information on the Internet is to distribute it using
virtual personalities (virtuals). This distribution may vary. The Internet provides
a huge opportunity to create the right entourage. This also applies to elements related
to the virtual itself, so to speak, to its "appearance", character, competencies, connections,
and to elements of the environment - external conditions accompanying the moment
of impact. Related statements made by third-party personalities, news or information
noise, the appearance of the site where the impact occurs. For examplemeasures
if such a virtual machine has become an authoritative source If the user has received
information for a specific audience, then information on their behalf will also "hit the target"
faster in this audience. People will take this information with less caution and less criticism.
Or if such a virtual machine has become a dialog participant, then the information given to
them will be more easily perceived by other participants (and not only), the more
human-like this virtual looks (among other things, of course).
Or if such a virtual machine has certain characteristics that make the affected object
more "malleable". For example, the "connections" of a virtual machine is the appearance
of interaction with some fundamentally important people. Or participation in some events,
or something else. How virtual identities are created
What is a virtual identity? In fact ( in the most minimal form) - this is a single account on
some site on the Internet. But the account that you can use to leave a message. This can
be a blog, a social network account, or a forum account.… This is the simplest option. But even
this simple option requires additional actions. Depending on the tasks that the virtual machine
was created to solve, it also requires some elaboration of the nuances of this virtual machine.

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A virtual is, by analogy, an agent of influence with a corresponding legend. And this is the
very legend he needs to create. Create both the virtual personality itself (appearance,
connections, character) and a legend - its past. With regard to virtual reality, I don't even
know where the boundary between creating the virtual personality itself and its legend lies.
But I'll leave it to those who want to prioritize it.
General
The more a virtual person is believed, the more human-like the virtual person looks.
For example, you need to fill out the virtual user's profile in a blog or forum, or in a social
network. The profile of the same account that will be used for the impact. You need a
"human" photo (human within the scope of the virtual's purpose). You need to fill in at least
some of the profile fields (interests, signature, etc.). For example, if a virtual user is
supposed to provoke subsequent communication outside of this site, then you need some
kind of contact in the personal data of this virtual user. And if the virtual is intended to influence
a man, then you can try it on behalf of the virtual in a female "guise".
Special offer
For very simple tasks, usually, but not always, a newly created account on
the corresponding site is enough. However, simple tasks are rare. More often, you need to
carefully study the identity of the virtual person so that the object will perceive it as it should,
and when checking the virtual person, make sure that the virtual person presented it to him.
To do this, you need, in addition to the profile, to create the appropriate" environment " of the
virtual machine. This environment can include an account in a social network or several, and
an additional blog, and posts on specialized forums, and "friends". This development of the
legend requires certain resources, mostly time. It is much
more difficult in a situation where you need to create fairly old "traces" of the virtual machine.
For example, his statements a year or two ago. Such a need is still rare, but it already
happens. And over time, when people's virtual education increases, it will become
a necessity. For such situations, you need to create virtuals for future use and maintain
visibility of their vital activity. The Internet makes
it possible to create virtual identities an unlimited number of times. And an attacker can make
it look like the material is being distributed or discussed by hundreds, or even youthousands
of people. Actually, this creates the appearance of mass participation on the Internet.

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