Information and Disinformation Systems and New Ways of Building in Safeguards Against Propagation of Disinformation

摘要

In public domain electronic information systems the need to provide effective mechanisms ensuring the authenticity of not only the data, but also of all the information system components becomes more and more imperative. This paper presents the results of research on protecting information systems against disinformation attacks. On the basis of information theory and set theory information systems are compared with disinformation systems. Methods of creating autonomous disinformation systems and disinformation systems based on the existing information systems are described. Special attention is given to mechanisms by which pseudorandom disinformation systems are constructed. Since it is very difficult to locate such system, they constitute effective means of propagating untrue and incomplete knowledge.rnTo describe the disinformation properties of systems, a measure of disinformation in the form of distortion coefficient a is introduced. It is shown how disinformation systems evolving in time can be constructed. In disinformation propagation, the creation of disinformation systems based on the existing information systems plays a major role. Besides the large amounts of accumulated knowledge, the existing information systems have the users' confidence. As a result of a disinformation attack such systems can be transformed into disinformation systems. The insurance of the authenticity of the information contained in information systems is a major problem in running such systems.rnSimple cryptographic methods of ensuring authenticity, such as digital signatures and marks, are easy to implement but they do not fully protect the authenticity of information. In this paper, methods of ensuring the authenticity of information by embedding additional hidden information layers in images or other elements stored in the knowledge bases or the viewing layers of information systems are proposed. The proposed solutions are the latest results of the research undertaken by the author in 1997. In particular, a new kind of invisible structural signatures for the construction of invisible layers protecting the authenticity of information are proposed. Such signatures are more resistant to scanning and printing whereby the hidden authentication information can be transferred to documents printed in the information system.