17: Distorting the truth: The roots of online political disinformation campaigns, with Theresa Payton and Nick Biasini

On today's episode we’re heading into the murky waters of online manipulation campaigns, and particularly how they’re used to try and influence political elections.
To do that, we welcome back Theresa Payton, the first female CIO of the White House and author of 'Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth'. We also welcome for the first time, Nick Biasini. Nick is a threat researcher within Cisco Talos and recently published a paper called ‘The Building Blocks of political disinformation campaigns’, which is part of Talos’ hands on research into election security.
We chat about some of the things that shocked Theresa when she was doing her research into manipulation tactics, as well as the amplification methods that are being used to spread certain lies online. Plus, we talk about what can be done to curb these campaigns with only a few weeks to go until the United States general election.
This is a really fascinating discussion, and whilst it highlighted the huge challenges that we’re facing at the moment, Nick and Theresa shared a lot of great information on how we can overcome them.
Also in this episode, Ben Nahorney shares his latest research on current threat trends. This time we rank the Indicators of Compromise that organizations have encountered grouped by particular topics, including ransomware, credential stealing, and looking at the top operating system IoCs.
Link to Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth'
Link to ‘The Building Blocks of political disinformation campaigns’