Cybersecurity

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 18:12:32 +0000

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence admin Tue, 02/07/2023 - 13:12

It is well known that predators lurk on the internet seeking to harm others through misinformation, bullying, and hate speech. What is not understood, however, is how online abuse and harassment like this spread via misinformation can lead to real, physical violence in communities.

To understand and counter this phenomenon, faculty with Georgia Tech’s College of Computing is leading a two-year study on the impact of online violence-provoking misinformation and hate speech toward minority populations.

Realizing the implication on public health and safety, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is funding the study through a $678,000 grant. Georgia Tech’s Srijan Kumar is the principal investigator of the CDC grant while Munmun De Choudhury is co-PI.

“The conversations we have and the information we consume on the web really shape our behavior not just online, but in the real-world,” said Kumar, an assistant professor with the School of Computational Science and Engineering. “We need systematic evaluations and an all-hands-on-deck approach to study what sort of societal impact harmful online content has on health, equity, integrity, and safety.”

Inspiration for this study comes from the researchers’ observations of prevalent hate speech and calls for racially motivated violence on the internet and social media. This issue became more prominent during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In their grant proposal, the researchers say more than 11,000 incidents of physical violence and online aggression against Asians were reported during the pandemic. They also state that misinformation about Covid-19 led to destruction of property and over 800 deaths.

To understand the connection between virtual misinformation and physical violence, the study has four stated goals:

Identify health misinformation that promotes community violence
Map and measure prevalence of violence-provoking health misinformation across social media platforms
Establish the causal impact of such misinformation on consumers’ reactions and intention to engage in harm
Design mitigation and intervention strategies to reduce the prevalence of such misinformation

According to the group, social media is often “ground-zero” for health misinformation where it spreads at exceptional speed and scale. That is why the team intends to study hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms Twitter and Reddit.

“The very use of these platforms is impacting us in different ways. Sometimes these impacts are good, sometimes they are bad,” said De Choudhury, an associate professor with the School of Interactive Computing. “As we think about our wellbeing and the role of these online platforms, we cannot ignore the very fact that misinformation on those platforms is affecting our wellbeing in negative ways.”

The group selected Twitter and Reddit specifically due to their prominence in networking and wide range of demographically diverse users, a fact supported by Pew Internet Research statistics.

Diversity of the two social media platforms make them the ideal ecosystem for what the group intends to observe: anti-Asian and Anti-Black violence-provoking misinformation.

Given the correlation of Covid-19 misinformation spread and increase of discrimination and violence toward Asian and Black communities during the pandemic, the researchers believe their findings will make meaningful impact for people affected by this public health issue.

For example, the group points out that misinformation masquerading as medical racism further targeted Black communities. As a result, this both degraded trust in institutions and diminished vaccine efficacy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Purdue University Assistant Professor Laura Schwab-Reese, an expert in community and behavioral health, joins Kumar and De Choudhury the research group. Together, they will collaborate with the non-profit Anti-Defamation League during the study. Backed with CDC funding, the team will develop tools to study and find solutions to violence-provoking health misinformation.

For example, the researchers will start by developing algorithms to detect health misinformation and violence-provoking hate speech targeting minorities. These algorithms will rely on the latest machine learning methodologies and social media data sets.

From there, the group can build an interactive dashboard that maps the spread of violence-provoking misinformation online and offers analytic capabilities on the visualized data for end users. This will provide quantitative insight about the causal relationship between misinformation exposure and violent attitudes toward targeted communities.

Finally, the team will provide an intervention design plan to mitigate the impact of the misinformation. This will include presenting exploratory evaluation of interventions, and even creating new social media-based intervention tools that can interrupt misinformation.

By leveraging computing methods and interdisciplinary collaboration, the group is poised to make online and physical communities safer places for all.

“The reason we are partnering with the Anti-Defamation League and public health researchers is because community engagement is paramount in this work,” De Choudhury said. “One of the unique things about this study is that the computational techniques and interventions we will develop will be informed by the communities who are targeted by these incidents.”

Summary sentence

Srijan Kumar and Munmun De Choudhury receive CDC grant

Dateline

Wed, 10/12/2022 - 12:00

Contact

Bryant Wine, Communications Officer
bryant.wine@cc.gatech.edu

Location

Atlanta, GA

Associated importer

Keywords

Computational Science and Engineering

Core research areas

Cybersecurity

Data Engineering and Science

People and Technology

Public Service, Leadership, and Policy

Mercury ID

662017

Source updated

Wed, 10/12/2022 - 09:47

New Research Gives Users Another Reason to Hate Unwanted Ads

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 16:14:40 +0000

New Research Gives Users Another Reason to Hate Unwanted Ads admin Fri, 11/11/2022 - 11:14

New research released this week reveals the process used by third party advertisers to target online users can be viewed or manipulated by online adversaries using only their target's email address.

A four-person team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and New York University (NYU) presented their findings Wednesday at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), a premier security venue.

Today, much of the advertising that appears online is specifically tailored to individuals based on their browsing history, location, and a variety of other factors that have been collected by third party advertising networks.

This data is collected by tracking cookies, which are sent out by third party ad networks and correlated with unique identifiers like email addresses. These cookies allow advertisers to create extensive profiles of internet users, however as the researchers found, this system can be influenced by bad actors.

Once an attacker knows a user’s email address, they can tap into the information being collected by any third-party advertiser observing a specific user’s targeted ad stream. This could allow bad actors insight into to an individual’s detailed browsing history, such as online retailers and travel websites.

“Third party ad networks have no direct relationship with users. Thus, if they want to track user activity across devices, they must rely on identity information, such as email addresses, given to them from other various websites,” said Paul Pearce, assistant professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) at Georgia Tech. “Our work shows the way that information is passed to the ad networks is both insecure and hard to verify. If an attacker knows a victim’s email address, they can lie to the ad network pretending to be a user, leading to very real privacy problems.”

The researchers describe this susceptibility as advertising identity entanglement and it happens when attackers confuse ad networks into correlating the attacker’s tracking cookies with a targeted person’s email address, looping them into the data being gathered by third parties. As Pearce and his colleagues state in their paper, adversaries can also leverage the process to send ads of any kind to their targets.

"When I use the Internet on my own private device, like a phone or a laptop, I don't expect that anyone who knows my personal email could manipulate what I see,” said Chris Kanich, associate professor at UIC. “This attack is particularly disturbing, and I am relieved that I use ad and tracking blockers in my web browsers."

To test the scale of this problem, researchers created an artificial users and profile for their experiment, at no time was a real person targeted. By knowing only, the experimental user’s email address, the team was able to Identify specific items and websites the victim interacted with.

Along with shopping habits, the test also showed retargeted advertisements can contain sensitive location information. For example, if a victim interacted with some hotel and travel websites, the attacker could then receive retargeted ads for the specific hotel the victim viewed.

“An ad network potentially leaking travel plans to anyone with a target’s email address is a significant privacy threat and potentially dangerous to people being stalked,” said Damon McCoy, associate professor at NYU.

The researchers indicate that combatting this problem without the support of ad networks is challenging, but ad blockers provide a reasonable initial option to limit exposing a user’s private data. Mitigation of this threat shouldn’t just fall on the users, however. The team also suggests that if third party ad networks encrypted the process of exchanging identity information and ensured the data was verified and correct it would help mitigate the threat.

The research was presented at ACM CCS’22. The paper, Cart-ology: Intercepting Targeted Advertising via Ad Network Identity Entanglement, is co-authored by SCP Ph.D. student ChangSeok Oh, Kanich, McCoy, and Pearce. In accordance with ethical research guidelines, the threat was disclosed to Criteo, one of the largest third-party ad networks on the market, as well as Yahoo.

Summary sentence

Cybersecurity Researchers Show How Attackers Can See Your Online Ads Knowing Only Your Email Address

Dateline

Thu, 11/10/2022 - 12:00

jpopham3@gatech.edu

Contact

John Popham

Communications Officer for School of Cybersecurity and Privacy

Keywords

Cybersecurity

Data Privacy

unwanted ads

vulnerabilities

school of cybersecurity and privacy

Research

News room topics

Science and Technology

Core research areas

Cybersecurity

Mercury ID

663088

Source updated

Fri, 11/11/2022 - 10:11

Newly Named Founding Chair Recognizes 'Cybersecurity Revolves Around Problems, Not Academic Disciplines'

bwaye3 — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 22:10:24 +0000

Newly Named Founding Chair Recognizes 'Cybersecurity Revolves Around Problems, Not Academic Disciplines' bwaye3 Mon, 02/14/2022 - 17:10

The College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology is proud to announce it has selected Michael Bailey as the founding chair of its School of Cybersecurity and Privacy.

Bailey comes to Tech from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“I am enthusiastic about my new role as the founding chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy,” Bailey said. “The students, staff, and faculty of Georgia Tech have a sterling record of achievement. I look forward to working with them to create a deeply satisfying future for the department — one in which our use-inspired, multidisciplinary view of cybersecurity and privacy is a positive force for change.”

Prior to Illinois, Bailey was a Research Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Michigan. He has also worked at Amoco Corporation, Andersen Consulting, and three startups, including a stint as the Director of Engineering at Arbor Networks.

At Arbor, Bailey managed a team of more than 30 engineers whose software protected 70 percent of the entire internet’s transit traffic against distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

“Michael is an experienced manager who is a veteran of higher education and in industry,” said Charles Isbell, dean and John P. Imlay Chair of the College of Computing. “He understands that cybersecurity revolves around problems, not academic disciplines, which is crucially important for this inter-college school. I am pleased to welcome him to his new role at Tech.”

The School of Cybersecurity and Privacy brings together 40 faculty members from the College of Computing, the College of Engineering, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Scheller College of Business, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The school was founded in 2020, with Richard DeMillo serving as interim until the hire of Bailey as its first and founding chair.

“Congratulations to Michael on being named chair of one of our newest schools at Georgia Tech,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, dean and Ivan Allen, Jr. chair of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “It is increasingly important that we continue to collaborate across disciplines to thoroughly capture all aspects of cybersecurity, including our strengths in public policy and governance. Our Ivan Allen College faculty are looking forward to collaborating with members of SCP.”

“As an international leader in engineering, computing, and public policy, Georgia Tech researchers stand at the intersection of cybersecurity and privacy,” said Raheem Beyah, dean of the College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair. “Michael’s leadership skills and research background will elevate our faculty as they continue to define the future of the field. The College of Engineering and I look forward to collaborating with Michael upon his arrival at Georgia Tech.”

Nationally ranked, innovative, interdisciplinary, and definitive, SCP draws skilled cybersecurity professionals from technology, policy, business, and practical fields to meet a rising national and international demand. Housed within the nationally ranked College of Computing, this new school builds on Georgia Tech’s 20-year investment to further develop the research and education of cybersecurity and privacy.

Georgia Tech has been ranked #2 in undergraduate cybersecurity education by U.S. News & World Report. The Institute receives more than $180 million in annual cybersecurity research awards and has 200,000 square feet of classified research space. There are more than 1,300 master’s students and 70 Ph.D. students studying cybersecurity and privacy at Georgia Tech.

Summary sentence

Michael Bailey has been named as the founding chair of Georgia Tech's School of Cybersecurity and Privacy.

Dateline

Tue, 02/01/2022 - 12:00

claycombe@cc.gatech.edu

Contact

Ann Claycombe, Director of Communications
claycombe@cc.gatech.edu

Keywords

go-researchnews

News room topics

Campus and Community

Core research areas

Cybersecurity

Mercury ID

655033

Source updated

Tue, 02/01/2022 - 20:56

Cybersecurity

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence

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New Research Gives Users Another Reason to Hate Unwanted Ads

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Newly Named Founding Chair Recognizes 'Cybersecurity Revolves Around Problems, Not Academic Disciplines'

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