Publications

Social media is an effective way of influencing human society and behavior and shaping public opinion. Cyber influence operation means using cyber tools and methods in order to manipulate public opinion. Today, many countries use cyberspace, and specifically social media, to manage cyber influence operations as part of holistic information warfare. Most of these operations are done covertly and, therefore, identifying them is challenging; moreover, it is not an easy task to differentiate between legitimate or malicious influence operations. This paper will describe cyber influence operations, the potential damages that they could incur, and how they are conducted. Furthermore, the paper will analyze the challenges of identifying such operations and will detail several indicative parameters with which cyber influence operations can be identified.