Digital Smarts - Don’t Take Anything at Face Value - Misinformation

For a long time many watchers of the digital landscape have quietly been saying that the biggest cybersecurity risk is not identity theft, but misinformation. For example, if a hacker attacked a major news outlet and posted a false story about a rabies outbreak by an army of rabid rats in Times Square, panic might ensue even if the article was removed within minutes. That’s because the info may well have already been reposted and retweeted thousands of times. The misinformation likely would lead to crowded sidewalks, traffic accidents, overflowing hospitals, a plummeting stock market and other chaos.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers poll found that news outlets are seeing more and more cyberattacks on their websites. Jeff Kosseff, assistant professor of cybersecurity law at the United States Naval Academy, feels that hackers who deface websites to spread false information can be just as dangerous as those who steal identities and other data. He also believes that media sites must beef up security and that new federal laws are needed to provide law enforcement with precise and effective tools to prevent and punish website defacement.