CSA Swiss Chapter

Most people in the same constellation don’t develop the negative mindset of hackers.

Soft personality, shyness
Frustration, lack of recognition
Suffering from colleagues, partners, friends, job
Want to shine and do well, be accepted and recognised
Want to break out from lack of recognition, lack of appreciation, pressure … search for alternatives
Meet shiny people who appear strong, convincing, and give the soft people seemingly what they crave for
Even more: make them feel needed, indispensable, important, recognised
Lack of economic perspectives and at the same time political system rewarding patriotism
Lack of personal environment which can detect any of the above and support in changing perspective
Mental instability
Feeling of being left out

Identifying potential interception points and mechanisms “Supply Side”

Which of the above conditions and transmission mechanisms are suitable to interfere with?
What possible interference patterns and approaches exist and how can these be tuned to achieve positive outcome?
Longer term approaches to impact change in the conditions to prevent them from fertilising hacktivism mindset.
“Social engineering”: target potential or actual Hackers and their social environment via the conditions and transmission mechanisms identified in this research project, to approach them and effect a mindset change.
Influencing in a positive sense before Hackers turn into evil: recognise their potential early, identify situations in which people may turn from despair to criminality, foster a culture of providing a safe harbour and offering other perspectives.
Often, the environment of those who may turn into a hacker career sees signs much earlier before the actual tipping point: inform the general public about such signs and encourage them to watch and interfere or seek support.
Offer and broadly communicate programs which are publicly accessible and which address and are appealing to people with such special situations or skills.
Offer a scheme of recognition which is as strong and incentivising as the Dark Net Recognition.

Congruency of “Supply Side” and “Receiver Side” motivators e.g. craving for appreciation

Undermining with subversion: Get closer to the targets: intrusion into social channels, connecting, posing, praising, applauding, establishing credibility, establishing trust, collecting information, beginning to subtly seed information.
Influencing with deception: working actively on the targets, leverage trust established to influence with own information which may include partial misinformation, throw baits in disguise in the context of the established trust, engage even more and foster action by the targets to reveal more critical information, etc.
Acting with poisoning: “Psychology as a Weapon” and “Code as a Weapon”: targeting the broad public or specific important / highly respected individuals with psychological means to poison their opinion and to leverage them thereafter as opinion leaders to achieve wide spread poisoning. Misuse the trust established and the information gathered during the undermining and influencing phases, to weaponise and intrude into protected environments via identity and authentication hijacking, misuse identity and their credibility to intrude into trusted news feeds, fora, social media to further inject and spread poisoned information to poison the receiving society.

Identify action points on the “Receiver Side”:

All: educate to overcome the lack of understanding of exposure to cyber attacks, social engineering, indirect exposure via careless information sharing or unconscious biases of trust, and their transmission mechanisms.
All: Behaviour change: how to apply curiosity and social / emotional awareness and turn it into mischievous vigilance to prevent being caught by hacking.
Private Individuals: awareness activities to help identifying potential persons in the personal environment who could become susceptible to developing into hacktivism, and to coach or encourage them to change mindset or route, or to offer them alternatives, seek programs offered, outside support.
Society and Communities: How does a state’s society, a community or a group respond to the communication received via the transmission channels, in particular to the subversion, deception and poisoning triad? Can this be improved, sharpened, immunised by appropriate awareness and information / education campaigns? How can state / community leadership impact and positively influence this?
Corporates: Top Management culture and behaviours exemplarily demonstrated.
Corporates: Organisational culture change: modifying processes, incentives and organisational mindset.
Corporates: All staff: Develop psychological, social and emotional awareness.

Design programs of communication and awareness:

Content attuned to appeal to, attract and make think those who are on the “Supply Side”
Active communication in fora, schools, universities, internet groups, social media, darknet channels
Public programs to inform, raise awareness, develop understanding of such constellations, to:
Sharpen awareness and to sensitise people both for their own benefit not to fall prey so easily of attacks
Spot potential candidates on the “Supply Side”
Know about where to go for support and guidance
Know about transmission mechanisms employed, in particular when facing external state sponsored psychological interference
Know where to look for alternative, neutral or non-manipulated information, to be able to contrast potential attempts of state sponsored undermining, deception or poisoning

State pressure and state sponsored hacktivism:

Autocratic governments will always want to influence other nations. To counteract these attempts, public awareness of the transmission channels and the mechanisms of psychology as a weapon are critical and must be communicated actively and though many channels including social media reaching those who are usually not monitoring official information channels.
Leverage psychology as a benign tool not weapon, to create constructive awareness.
Train the general public to apply mischievous vigilance in any information they consume, to question, check, compare, seek alternatives.