Disinformation as a multiplier of existential threat
In medieval Europe, disinformation and misinformation was so thoroughly identified with wrongdoing that it was depicted as the work of the demon ‘Titivillus,’ who was infamous for identifying, collecting, and transcribing sins in speech, writing, and song. Titivillus and one of his helpers is seen at the left of this image, next to the gossiping trio behind the priest. Public domain image / Princeton University Program in Medieval Studies.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Deception, disinformation, and fakery are nothing new in the world.
Long before the current era (BCE), the ancient Greeks used deceptive tactics against their enemies during the Trojan War, when they constructed a gigantic, hollow wooden statue of a horse with a small, select team of soldiers hidden inside. Sometime in the 12th or 13th century BCE, they left the horse—with its hidden cargo—immediately outside the gates of Troy, their enemy’s capital city, and pretended to sail away. The city’s defenders then hauled the horse inside the city walls as a victory trophy—and later that night, the hidden soldiers crept out of the horse and opened the gates of the city to the rest of the Greek army (which had returned under the cover of night), allowing them to enter and utterly destroy the city.
They were so successful, in fact, that the phrase “Trojan horse” entered the lexicon, to describe any strategy that tricks a target into letting an enemy enter a protected inner sanctum.
Thousands of years later, that phrase is still used; in the world of computing, a “Trojan horse attack” describes how a certain type of malicious computer program is designed to disguise itself as a harmless, legitimate piece of software—and trick users into willingly letting it into a secure system where it can then steal data, create backdoors, install other malware, or spy on user activity. In the cyber world, Trojan horse attacks have likely been around since at least 1971, which is when they were mentioned in passing in one of the first Unix software manuals.
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