Information Security of Digital Communication: How to Stay Safe?

Vladimir D. Nikishin

and Elena I. Galyashina

Department of Forensic Expertise, Kutafin Moscow State Law University, Sadovaya-Kudrunskaya Str., 9, Moscow, Russia

Keywords: Information Security, Information Law, Worldview Security, Cyber Threats, Ugc, Web 2.0, Big Data,

Information Bubble, Destructive Content, Terrorism, Extremism, Hate Speech, Nazism, Columbine, School

Shooting, Neo-Paganism, Prison Subculture, Cyberbullying, Suicide, Self-Harm, Sexting, Cyber Grooming,

Fake News.

Abstract: The article is devoted to legal, forensic and organisational problems of information security of digital

communication. The authors characterise the main Internet features that contribute to the spread of destructive

content online: network externality, user-generated content, filter bubbles, ‘tunnel’ of virtual reality, Internet

determinism etc. The study was based on the hypothesis that virus-like, massive dissemination of destructive

information in the Internet environment, for the users of which the main criterion for the truth of information

becomes its virality, creates a real threat to the information security of Internet users. The research was

interdisciplinary and included both direct monitoring of Russian speaking segment of social networks (mainly

VKontakte) for destructive propaganda, and analysis of other empirical materials: court decisions, expert

opinions, media materials, statistics from government bodies and non-governmental organizations, Russian

and foreign legislation, etc. The article covers the following cyber threats to information (worldview) security:

propaganda of terrorism and extremism, including Nazism, Columbine (school shooting), radical ‘neo-

paganism’; prison subculture propaganda; cyberbullying; propaganda of suicide, self-harm and other

autodestructive ideas; advertisement of cyber communities that create a negative image of motherhood and

childhood, conduct pro-abortion and child-free campaigns; sexting; cyber grooming; fake news etc.

1 INTRODUCTION

The digital environment is favourable for the

massive, virus-like dissemination of radical

propaganda, defamatory, fake and other destructive

information.

This is largely facilitated by the spread of the two

fundamental mechanisms of ‘Web 2.0’:

 network externality – the effect that each

participant of the network has on changing the

value of the entire system;

 user-generated content (UGC) – content

(information material) created by users of a

product or service and posted in the public

domain (social networks, online platforms,

etc.) (Gurov, 2019; Chubina, 2020).

These mechanisms, together with the use of

algorithms for processing big data, cause

informational ‘web determinism’ (‘filter bubbles’:

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2819-8517

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8989-1003

the user's past clicks determine his/her future clicks),

i.e. they ensure the formation of an ‘information

bubble’ of an Internet user, modify his/her ‘tunnel’ of

virtual reality. The Internet user gets only those

information flows that correspond to his/her

previously expressed interest and do not give

alternative assessments and opinions. All of this

creates the ground for the implementation of

propaganda activities, including radical campaigns

(Nikishin, 2020).

The Internet has become a global communication

platform that has contributed to the development of

the network phenomenon of echo chambers (Sunstein

2001a; Potseluev, Podshibiakina, 2018). Internet

users, regardless of their territorial affiliation, unite

into virtual communities, communicate and become

even more consolidated in their ideological attitudes,

and everything that is not consistent with the values

of these communities is ignored without any

criticism, i.e. the mechanism of the so-called ‘group

Nikishin, V. and Galyashina, E.

Information Security of Digital Communication: How to Stay Safe?.

DOI: 10.5220/0010617600003170

In Proceedings of the International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Computer and Information Security (INFSEC 2021), pages 68-73

ISBN: 978-989-758-531-9; ISSN: 2184-9862

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

polarization’, about which K. Sunstein wrote, is

launched (Sunstein 2007).

According to Canadian professor W. McKay,

cyberspace can be compared to a large uncontrolled

public playground where unscrupulous participants

can harass, intimidate and defame others, causing

emotional and psychological stress with relative

impunity (MacKay, 2012). As F.N. Gurov remarked,

‘in the information era, an individual becomes an

object of manipulation in order to provide the

“customer” with the necessary user behavior’ (Gurov,

2019).

Virus-like, massive dissemination of destructive

information in the Internet environment, for the users

of which the main criterion for the truth of

information becomes its virality (i.e. the very fact of

its widespread distribution), creates a real threat to the

information security of World Wide Web users.

Information attacks in Internet media transform the

‘tunnel’ of the user's virtual reality imposing the

content that will attract users’ attention (based on an

algorithmic analysis of their behavior in the Internet,

including the history of web pages). The danger is

that such information attacks are used not only for

marketing and advertising purposes but also for

criminogenic purposes violating the information

security of a person. The ‘modified’ tunnel of reality

(representing a narrow spectrum of ideas about reality

inside an algorithmically generated virtual reality)

supplemented by harmful (destructive) information

‘endows’ this criminogenic information with the

property of virality, i.e. this information begins to

spread on the Web on its own, with the help

ofordinary users and attracting new ‘adepts’ in a

virus-like manner.

In the context of informational ‘Internet

determinism’, when the user's past clicks determine

their future clicks, the user is actually limited by the

information presented to him/her on the basis of

algorithms within the tunnel of reality. The userdoes

not see an alternative analysis of situations and

opinions, all of which creates favorable conditions for

the determination of his/her worldview and

radicalization of consciousness (Nikishin, 2020).

2 METHODOLOGY OF

RESEARCH

The study was interdisciplinary and included both

direct monitoring of social networks (mainly

VKontakte) for destructive propaganda, and analysis

of other empirical materials: court decisions, expert

opinions, media materials, statistics from government

bodies and non-governmental organizations, Russian

and foreign legislation, etc.

The analysis of foreign legislation (Golovanova,

2019; Filippov et al., 2019; Golovanova, 2018)

demonstrates that most democratic states are

following the path of toughening (introducing) legal

responsibility for destructive speech behavior in the

network, thus limiting freedom of speech in order to

protect other benefits. The tragic events of 2019 in

California (USA), Texas (USA), Christchurch (New

Zealand), Ohio (USA), etc. forced the United States

and New Zealand authorities to issue calls for drastic

measures to restrict Internet freedom in order to limit

the spread of propaganda of extremism and other

forms of violence (Amelina, 2019).

According to the Safe Internet League, 43 million

social media accounts are influenced by destructive

content, 8.2 million accounts belong to teenagers

(http://ligainternet.ru/). Monitoring showed that a

wide network of destructive communities has formed

in cyberspace (primarily in social networks), which is

used for a massive attack on the worldview of users:

depressive and (auto)aggressive content imposes

certain behavioral patterns associated with violence

on users. As the researchers note, the purpose of such

information resources is to force Internet users ‘to

commit suicidal or aggressive (criminal) actions,

which may or may not be attributed to socio-political,

religious or other motivation’ (Amelina, 2018).

Monitoring of VKontakte demonstrates that the

‘contingent’ of depressive and (auto)aggressive

communities often overlap, the members of such

communities do not have an established worldview;

the ideology of a particular community is nothing

more than the idea of violence for the sake of

violence: The same web users can be members of

ISIS (an organization banned in the Russian

Federation), Columbiners, ‘AUE’ (prison

subculture), Nazi groups and suicidal communities.

The analysis of personal profiles and timeline posts

on ‘VKontakte’ demonstrates how the preferences of

adherents of the cult of violence have changed over

time. The ideas of the struggle for Donbass are

replaced by Islamist ideas, interchanging with the

ideas of ‘neo-paganism’, school shootings, etc.

Many destructive communities also do not have

‘ideological severity’, for example, there are

alternating posts of Probanderists (Bandera

supporters), ‘neo-pagans’, adherents of the ‘Caucasus

Emirate’ (an organization banned in the Russian

Federation), stories about serial murders, etc. in the

‘Time to hate’ community (Amelina, 2018).

Information Security of Digital Communication: How to Stay Safe?

The story of A. Konev (‘Khabarovsk shooter’ who

was killed during the attack on the Federal Security

Service reception room) demonstrates the unity of

neo-Nazis, politicized neo-pagans, religious fanatics

and suicidal groups’ views on the forms and methods

of struggle for the capture of political power in the

country. As in the case of the ‘Khabarovsk shooter’,

a movement praising the so called ‘cleaners’ has

grown on VKontakte (In 2017, a gang of young

people was convicted of murdering street sleepers.

‘Cleaners’ were found guilty of murdering 14

people).

The social network VKontakte stores the content

of communities under the general name ‘Murderer’s

Logic’ (and similar names) numbering thousands of

subscribers and aimed at promoting mass murders.

Some of these communities continue to be updated

daily with new posts. There are also communities

broadcasting the ideas of a bloody sexual violence,

murder of sexual partners and parasuicidal ideas (see,

e.g., the community ‘Hate’ with about 1500

subscribers – URL: https://vk.com/h6a6t6e).

There is the publicly available content of

communities that do not openly call for violence but

actively promote its cruelty and violence through

various memes such as ‘Reasons to kill’ as well as

stories of ‘real’ murders. Such communities have an

audience of 1,500 to 350,000 or more subscribers

(see, e.g.: ‘World of Maniacs and Serial Killers’ –

URL: https://vk.com/mandsm); ‘1000 Reasons to

Become a Killer’ – URL: https://vk.com/bykpuxo);

‘Serial Killer`s World’ – URL:

https://vk.com/skillers_world), so there is a need to

search for an organizational and legal model of

counteracting the spread of this kind of destructive

information.

It should be noted that a lot of VKontakte

communities of the Columbine discourse were

banned after the events of 02/03/2014 (Otradnoye),

09/05/2016 (Ivanteevka), 01/15/2018 (Perm) and the

tragedy in Ulan-Ude (01/19/2018). At the same time,

many ‘Columbine’ communities, the titles of which

do not directly mention ‘Columbine’, continue to be

open for public access. Some groups that justify and

praise the Columbine assassins have changed their

privacy settings to the ‘private’ mode.

In addition, the audience of such communities is

actively moving to Telegram due to the

aforementioned ban, while links to telegram channels

are available on VKontakte.

Columbine propaganda in the digital environment

and the threat of a repetition of the Columbine

scenario are confirmed by the following facts. Firstly,

despite the ban of Columbine communities on

VKontakte after the tragedy in Ulan-Ude, there were

at least 4 more tragedies with a similar scenario:

03/21/2018 in Shadrinsk, 04/18/2018 in Sterlitamak,

10/17/2018 in Kerch, 05/28/2019 in Volsk (Saratov

region). Secondly, during 2020, a number of attempts

to repeat the ‘Columbine’ scenario were identified not

only in schools. In the fall of 2020, journalists stated

that the Russian regions were overwhelmed by the

Columbine movement, and 13 teenagers, who lived in

different regions of the Russian Federation but were

part of the same closed Internet community, were

detained on September 1. In August 2020, the

Security 2.0 Center, operating under the Russian

Peace Foundation, identified several thousand videos

on TikTok, in which terrorist attacks in schools were

justified. Videos tagged with the hashtag #columbine

have over 3.5 million views on TikTok .

A dangerous tendency is the gradual change of the

place of committing crimes from schools and other

educational institutions to other places of mass

gathering of citizens not related to the organization of

the educational process (crowded stops of public

transport, shopping centers, markets, etc.).

Another destructive trend in the digital

communication environment is the advertisement of

groups that create a negative image of motherhood

and childhood, conduct pro-abortion and child-free

campaigns, remove the moral barrier to the use of

violence against children. In addition, there has been

a significant increase in the number of videos about

child sexual abuse distributed on the Internet

(increased by 541% in 2019 (Amelina, 2019)).

The number of victims of cyberbullying increased

in 2020 due to the pandemic, a total transition to

digital communication, and increased emotional

tension in conditions of isolation. The urgency of

countering cyberbullying is growing every year,

therefore, the legal models of countering this

phenomenon require further studies.

Longitudinal study of the content of ‘suicidal

social media communities’ and personal profiles of

users who committed suicides demonstrates a formed

‘suicidal cult’ characterized by the ideology of

devaluation of life, propaganda of the

meaninglessness of human existence, devaluation of

values such as love, friendship, family (Bychkova and

Radnaeva, 2018).

In 2017, VKontakte began to ban the use of words

with hashtags promoting a ‘suicidal quest’.

Delinquents reacted to this by posting truncated

hashtags and switching to Instagram and Telegram.

Another threat to the information security of an

individual in the digital environment is sexting, which

means the exchange of intimate content or messages

INFSEC 2021 - International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Computer and Information Security

leading to threats, blackmail, bullying and even

involvement in child pornography.

One of the threats to the informational security of

minors is cyber grooming, that is the establishment of

friendly relations and emotional connection with a

child or adolescent in order to gain his/her trust for

the purpose of sexual exploitation. In addition,

according to researchers from the UK (Hoyle et al.

2015; Edwards, 2017.), cyber grooming was actively

used to recruit girls in the so-called Islamic state (an

organization banned in the Russian Federation).

Another tool of informational influence on the

worldview of Internet users is fake news (although it

is not a new phenomenon, it has reached

unprecedented proportions due to new media

(Galyashina and Nikishin, 2020). The Safe Internet

League systematically registers the spread of fake

news in Russia.

Fake news acts as a tool for manipulating the

minds of Internet users and requires the development

of organizational and legal mechanisms for filtering

Internet content for fakes. It is worth noting that the

self-regulation mechanisms proposed, for example,

by Facebook raise concerns due to the already

manifested politicization of the Facebook leadership.

3 DISCUSSION OF RESEARCH

RESULTS

Based on the results of the study, we found that the

most widespread destructive content in the Russian-

speaking segment of the Internet is associated with

the following information (worldview) security

threats:

 propaganda of cult of cruelty and violence;

 popularization of extremist-terrorist ideology,

especially Columbine-subculture (school

shooting);

 humiliation of human dignity and

discrimination on the basis of language,

nationality, sex, religion and other socio-

biographical grounds or grounds of physical

disabilities;

 romanticizing of the underground culture

(including prison culture);

 glorification of murderers;

 popularization of suicidal and other self-

destructive behaviour, cybersuicide;

 cyberbullying, cyberbullicide;

 fake news.

In the Strategy for the Development of the

Information Society in the Russian Federation for

2017 – 2030 (Ukaz Prezidenta RF ot 9 maia 2017 g.

N 203), among the priorities in ensuring national

interests, the primary importance is given to the

formation of an ‘information space, taking into

account the needs of citizens and society in obtaining

high-quality and reliable information’ (p. 22). The

goals of the formation of the information space of

knowledge are defined as ‘ensuring the rights of

citizens to objective, reliable, safe information and

creating conditions for meeting their needs for

continuous development, obtaining high-quality and

reliable information, new competencies, expanding

horizons’ (p. 24).

Thus, the information security of an individual is

an integral part of the information security of the

Russian Federation and can be considered in two

aspects:

 as the security of the information itself

(personal data, personal, state, commercial or

family secrets, etc.) and

 as protection from (destructive) information.

Worldview cybersecurity is not reducible to any

of these aspects. It covers, first of all, the second

aspect and means the protection from information that

destructively affects the worldview of an individual,

his/her psychological and mental state, but also,

partially coincides with the first aspect, since the

dissemination of information constituting a personal

or family secret may serve as a cause for bullying a

person and even driving him/her to suicide

(cyberbullicide).

It is traditionally accepted that integral

components of personal security are such universal

values as life, health, and freedom. They are subject

to protection not only in the real (physical) but also in

virtual (cyberspace) world. Life and health are under

threat due to the dissemination of ideas of

unmotivated violence, Satanism, mass murder and

suicide, other self-destructive behaviour (self-harm,

etc.), i.e. web users influenced by such ideas are ready

to implement violence against themselves or others in

the real (physical) world. In addition, it should be

highlighted that the dissemination of such destructive

propaganda affects the mental health of web users.

Such values as honour, dignity, good name, business

reputation, in conditions of freedom and anonymity

of Internet communication are being marginalized.

Defamation, insults, slander, bullying, outing have

become integral attributes of modern web

communication.

In today's new realities, the idea that the Internet

is a space of absolute freedom and permissiveness has

fewer and fewer supporters. Digital transformation

influences all spheres of life and eradicates the

Information Security of Digital Communication: How to Stay Safe?

boundaries between the virtual world and the real

world. The idea of ‘electronic democracy’ seems

achievable. In 2001, K. Sunstein pointed out that the

echo chamber effect makes cyberspace difficult to be

compatible with the democratic communicative order

(Sunstein, 2001b). Thus, informational relations that

are being developed in cyber reality are subject to

clear legal regulation, taking into account their nature,

non-equivalence to ‘real’ relations.

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this article, the most widespread threats to the

information (worldview) security of the Russian-

speaking segment of Internet users were summarized

and characterized. There are several

recommendations aimed at improving the protection

of information security:

 When considering the issue of improving

Russian legislation regarding countering

sexting, it is necessary to take into account the

experience of foreign lawmakers who are

paying special attention to sexting among

minors (including the experience of Australia,

the USA, Canada).

 Consideration should be given to criminalizing

cyber grooming taking into account the

legislative experience of the UK and Australia

(the UK Sexual Offenses Act and the

Australian Queensland Criminal Code).

 Information security also requires the

development of legal and organizational

(including forensic) models and methods to

counter such phenomena of modern digital

communication as cyberflashing (unsolicited

sending of images or videos of the genitals),

revenge porn (disclosure of intimate photos or

videos without the consent of the person

depicted in order to cause him/her anxiety or

suffering), etc.

 Systemic changes to the Federal Law 'On

Information, Information Technologies and

Information Protection' dated July 27, 2006 N

149-FZ, the Federal Law 'On the Protection of

Children from Information Harmful to Their

Health and Development' dated December 29,

2010 N 436-FZ are required to expand and

specify the types of information prohibited or

restricted in distribution due to the emergence

of new destructive trends in the digital

environment. In addition, it is necessary to

unify the categorical apparatus of these federal

laws with the Criminal Code of the Russian

Federation and the Code of Administrative

Offenses of the Russian Federation.

 Consideration should be given to the possibility

of strengthening the institution of self-

regulation in information relations in the

Internet environment. It is required to tighten

the responsibility of the administrations of

social networks for failing to take measures to

counter the dissemination of destructive

content.

In addition, it is necessary to develop

organizational (including forensic) and legal models

and methods for countering destructive propaganda

and recruiting activities not only on the Internet but

also in networks such as Darknet, VPN, Tor, I2P,

Freenet.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The reported study was funded by RFBR, project

number 20-011-00190.

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Information Security of Digital Communication: How to Stay Safe?