UNESCO’s Course on Media and Information Literacy: Combating Misinformation through Education

Introduction

YouTube is testing a new feature called ‘Notes,’ which allows users to add community-sourced context to videos. The feature allows users to clarify if a video is a parody or if it is misrepresenting information. The feature builds on existing features to provide helpful content alongside videos. Currently under testing, the feature will be available to a limited number of eligible contributors who will be invited to write notes on videos. These notes will appear publicly under a video if they are found to be broadly helpful. Viewers will be able to rate notes into three categories: ‘Helpful,’ ‘Somewhat helpful,’ or ‘Unhelpful’. Based on the ratings, YouTube will determine which notes are published. The feature will first be rolled out on mobile devices in the U.S. in English. The Google-owned platform will look at ways to improve the feature over time, including whether it makes sense to expand it to other markets. 

YouTube To Roll Out The New ‘Notes’ Feature

YouTube is testing an experimental feature that allows users to add notes to provide relevant, timely, and easy-to-understand context for videos. This initiative builds on previous products that display helpful information alongside videos, such as information panels and disclosure requirements when content is altered or synthetic. YouTube in its blog clarified that the pilot will be available on mobiles in the U.S. and in the English language, to start with. During this test phase, viewers, participants, and creators are invited to give feedback on the quality of the notes.

YouTube further stated in its blog that a limited number of eligible contributors will be invited via email or Creator Studio notifications to write notes so that they can test the feature and add value to the system before the organisation decides on next steps and whether or not to expand the feature. Eligibility criteria include having an active YouTube channel in good standing with Yotube’s Community Guidelines.

Viewers in the U.S. will start seeing notes on videos in the coming weeks and months. In this initial pilot, third-party evaluators will rate the helpfulness of notes, which will help train the platform’s systems. As the pilot moves forward, contributors themselves will rate notes as well.

Notes will appear publicly under a video if they are found to be broadly helpful. People will be asked whether they think a note is helpful, somewhat helpful, or unhelpful and the reasons for the same. For example, if a note is marked as ‘Helpful,’ the evaluator will have the opportunity to specify  if it is so because it cites high-quality sources or is written clearly and neutrally. A bridging-based algorithm will be used to consider these ratings and determine what notes are published. YouTube is excited to explore new ways to make context-setting even more relevant, dynamic, and unique to the videos we are watching, at scale, across the huge variety of content on YouTube.

CyberPeace Analysis: How Can Notes Help Counter Misinformation

The potential effectiveness of countering misinformation on YouTube using the proposed ‘Notes’ feature is significant. Enabling contributors to include notes on videos can offer relevant and accurate context to clarify any misleading or false information in the video. These notes can aid in enhancing viewers' comprehension of the content and detecting misinformation. The participation from users to rate the added notes as helpful, somewhat helpful, and unhelpful adds a heightened layer of transparency and public participation in identifying the accuracy of the content. 

As YouTube intends to gather feedback from its various stakeholders to improve the feature over time, one can look forward to improved policy and practical over time: the feedback mechanism will allow for continuous refinement of the feature, ensuring it effectively addresses misinformation. The platform employs algorithms to identify helpful notes that cater to a broad audience across different perspectives. This helps showcase accurate information and combat misinformation.

Furthermore, along with the Notes feature, YouTube should explore and implement prebunking and debunking strategies on the platform by promoting educational content and empowering users to discern between fact and any misleading information. 

Conclusion

The new feature, currently in the testing phase, aims to counter misinformation by providing context, enabling user feedback, leveraging algorithms, promoting transparency, and continuously improving information quality. Considering the diverse audience on the platform and high volumes of daily content consumption, it is important for both the platform operators and users to engage with factual, verifiable information. The fallout of misinformation on such a popular platform can be immense, and so, any mechanism or feature that can help counter the same must be developed to its full potential. Apart from this new Notes feature, YouTube has also implemented certain measures in the past to counter misinformation, such as providing authenticated sources to counter any election misinformation during the recent 2024 elections in India. These efforts are a welcome contribution to our shared responsibility as netizens to create a trustworthy, factual and truly-informational digital ecosystem.

References:

• https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/new-ways-to-offer-viewers-more-context/
• https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/youtube-tests-feature-that-will-let-users-add-context-to-videos/article68302933.ece

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Introduction

With the increasing frequency and severity of cyber-attacks on critical sectors, the government of India has formulated the National Cyber Security Reference Framework (NCRF) 2023, aimed to address cybersecurity concerns in India. In today’s digital age, the security of critical sectors is paramount due to the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. Cybersecurity measures are crucial for protecting essential sectors such as banking, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, strategic enterprises, and government enterprises. This is an essential step towards safeguarding these critical sectors and preparing for the challenges they face in the face of cyber threats. Protecting critical sectors from cyber threats is an urgent priority that requires the development of robust cybersecurity practices and the implementation of effective measures to mitigate risks.

Overview of the National Cyber Security Policy 2013

The National Cyber Security Policy of 2013 was the first attempt to address cybersecurity concerns in India. However, it had several drawbacks that limited its effectiveness in mitigating cyber risks in the contemporary digital age. The policy’s outdated guidelines, insufficient prevention and response measures, and lack of legal implications hindered its ability to protect critical sectors adequately. Moreover, the policy should have kept up with the rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape and emerging technologies, leaving organisations vulnerable to new cyber-attacks. The 2013 policy failed to address the evolving nature of cyber threats, leaving organisations needing updated guidelines to combat new and sophisticated attacks.

As a result, an updated and more comprehensive policy, the National Cyber Security Reference Framework 2023, was necessary to address emerging challenges and provide strategic guidance for protecting critical sectors against cyber threats.

Highlights of NCRF 2023

Strategic Guidance: NCRF 2023 has been developed to provide organisations with strategic guidance to address their cybersecurity concerns in a structured manner.

Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR): The policy is based on a CBDR approach, recognising that different organisations have varying levels of cybersecurity needs and responsibilities.

Update of National Cyber Security Policy 2013: NCRF supersedes the National Cyber Security Policy 2013, which was due for an update to align with the evolving cyber threat landscape and emerging challenges.

Different from CERT-In Directives: NCRF is distinct from the directives issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) published in April 2023. It provides a comprehensive framework rather than specific directives for reporting cyber incidents.

Combination of robust strategies: National Cyber Security Reference Framework 2023 will provide strategic guidance, a revised structure, and a proactive approach to cybersecurity, enabling organisations to tackle the growing cyberattacks in India better and safeguard critical sectors. Rising incidents of malware attacks on critical sectors

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in malware attacks targeting critical sectors. These sectors, including banking, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, strategic enterprises, and government enterprises, play a crucial role in the functioning of economies and the well-being of societies. The escalating incidents of malware attacks on these sectors have raised concerns about the security and resilience of critical infrastructure.

Banking: The banking sector handles sensitive financial data and is a prime target for cybercriminals due to the potential for financial fraud and theft.

Energy: The energy sector, including power grids and oil companies, is critical for the functioning of economies, and disruptions can have severe consequences for national security and public safety.

Healthcare: The healthcare sector holds valuable patient data, and cyber-attacks can compromise patient privacy and disrupt healthcare services. Malware attacks on healthcare organisations can result in the theft of patient records, ransomware incidents that cripple healthcare operations, and compromise medical devices.

Telecommunications: Telecommunications infrastructure is vital for reliable communication, and attacks targeting this sector can lead to communication disruptions and compromise the privacy of transmitted data. The interconnectedness of telecommunications networks globally presents opportunities for cybercriminals to launch large-scale attacks, such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.

Transportation: Malware attacks on transportation systems can lead to service disruptions, compromise control systems, and pose safety risks.

Strategic Enterprises: Strategic enterprises, including defence, aerospace, intelligence agencies, and other sectors vital to national security, face sophisticated malware attacks with potentially severe consequences. Cyber adversaries target these enterprises to gain unauthorised access to classified information, compromise critical infrastructure, or sabotage national security operations.

Government Enterprises: Government organisations hold a vast amount of sensitive data and provide essential services to citizens, making them targets for data breaches and attacks that can disrupt critical services.

Conclusion  

The sectors of banking, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, strategic enterprises, and government enterprises face unique vulnerabilities and challenges in the face of cyber-attacks. By recognising the significance of safeguarding these sectors, we can emphasise the need for proactive cybersecurity measures and collaborative efforts between public and private entities. Strengthening regulatory frameworks, sharing threat intelligence, and adopting best practices are essential to ensure our critical infrastructure’s resilience and security. Through these concerted efforts, we can create a safer digital environment for these sectors, protecting vital services and preserving the integrity of our economy and society. The rising incidents of malware attacks on critical sectors emphasise the urgent need for updated cybersecurity policy, enhanced cybersecurity measures, a collaboration between public and private entities, and the development of proactive defence strategies. National Cyber Security Reference Framework 2023 will help in addressing the evolving cyber threat landscape, protect critical sectors, fill the gaps in sector-specific best practices, promote collaboration, establish a regulatory framework, and address the challenges posed by emerging technologies. By providing strategic guidance, this framework will enhance organisations’ cybersecurity posture and ensure the protection of critical infrastructure in an increasingly digitised world.

Digitisation in Agriculture

The traditional way of doing agriculture has undergone massive digitization in recent years, whereby several agricultural processes have been linked to the Internet. This globally prevalent transformation, driven by smart technology, encompasses the use of sensors, IoT devices, and data analytics to optimize and automate labour-intensive farming practices. Smart farmers in the country and abroad now leverage real-time data to monitor soil conditions, weather patterns, and crop health, enabling precise resource management and improved yields. The integration of smart technology in agriculture not only enhances productivity but also promotes sustainable practices by reducing waste and conserving resources. As a result, the agricultural sector is becoming more efficient, resilient, and capable of meeting the growing global demand for food.

Digitisation of Food Supply Chains

There has also been an increase in the digitisation of food supply chains across the globe since it enables both suppliers and consumers to keep track of the stage of food processing from farm to table and ensures the authenticity of the food product. The latest generation of agricultural robots is being tested to minimise human intervention. It is thought that AI-run processes can mitigate labour shortage, improve warehousing and storage and make transportation more efficient by running continuous evaluations and adjusting the conditions real-time while increasing yield. The company Muddy Machines is currently trialling an autonomous asparagus-harvesting robot called Sprout that not only addresses labour shortages but also selectively harvests green asparagus, which traditionally requires careful picking. However, Chris Chavasse, co-founder of Muddy Machines, highlights that hackers and malicious actors could potentially hack into the robot's servers and prevent it from operating by driving it into a ditch or a hedge, thereby impending core crop activities like seeding and harvesting. Hacking agricultural pieces of machinery also implies damaging a farmer’s produce and in turn profitability for the season.

Case Study: Muddy Machines and Cybersecurity Risks

A cyber attack on digitised agricultural processes has a cascading impact on online food supply chains. Risks are non-exhaustive and spill over to poor protection of cargo in transit, increased manufacturing of counterfeit products, manipulation of data, poor warehousing facilities and product-specific fraud, amongst others. Additional impacts on suppliers are also seen, whereby suppliers have supplied the food products but fail to receive their payments. These cyber-threats may include malware(primarily ransomware) that accounts for 38% of attacks, Internet of Things (IoT) attacks that comprise 29%, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, SQL Injections, phishing attacks etc. 

Prominent Cyber Attacks and Their Impacts

Ransomware attacks are the most popular form of cyber threats to food supply chains and may include malicious contaminations, deliberate damage and destruction of tangible assets (like infrastructure) or intangible assets (like reputation and brand). In 2017, NotPetya malware disrupted the world’s largest logistics giant Maersk and destroyed all end-user devices in more than 60 countries. Interestingly, NotPetya was also linked to the malfunction of freezers connected to control systems. The attack led to these control systems being compromised, resulting in freezer failures and potential spoilage of food, highlighting the vulnerability of industrial control systems to cyber threats.

Further Case Studies

NotPetya also impacted Mondelez, the maker of Oreos but disrupting its email systems, file access and logistics for weeks. Mondelez’s insurance claim was also denied since NotPetya malware was described as a “war-like” action, falling outside the purview of the insurance coverage. In April 2021, over the Easter weekend, Bakker Logistiek, a logistics company based in the Netherlands that offers air-conditioned warehousing and food transportation for Dutch supermarkets, experienced a ransomware attack. This incident disrupted their supply chain for several days, resulting in empty shelves at Albert Heijn supermarkets, particularly for products such as packed and grated cheese. Despite the severity of the attack, the company successfully restored their operations within a week by utilizing backups. JBS, one of the world’s biggest meat processing companies, also had to pay $11 million in ransom via Bitcoin to resolve a cyber attack in the same year, whereby computer networks at JBS were hacked, temporarily shutting down their operations and endangering consumer data. The disruption threatened food supplies and risked higher food prices for consumers. Additional cascading impacts also include low food security and hindrances in processing payments at retail stores. 

Credible Threat Agents and Their Targets

Any cyber-attack is usually carried out by credible threat agents that can be classified as either internal or external threat agents. Internal threat agents may include contractors, visitors to business sites, former/current employees, and individuals who work for suppliers. External threat agents may include activists, cyber-criminals, terror cells etc. These threat agents target large organisations owing to their larger ransom-paying capacity, but may also target small companies due to their vulnerability and low experience, especially when such companies are migrating from analogous methods to digitised processes.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation warns that the food and agricultural systems are most vulnerable to cyber-security threats during critical planting and harvesting seasons. It noted an increase in cyber-attacks against six agricultural co-operatives in 2021, with ancillary core functions such as food supply and distribution being impacted. Resultantly, cyber-attacks may lead to a mass shortage of food not only meant for human consumption but also for animals.

Policy Recommendations

To safeguard against digital food supply chains, Food defence emerges as one of the top countermeasures to prevent and mitigate the effects of intentional incidents and threats to the food chain. While earlier, food defence vulnerability assessments focused on product adulteration and food fraud, including vulnerability assessments of agriculture technology now be more relevant.  

Food supply organisations must prioritise regular backups of data using air-gapped and password-protected offline copies, and ensure critical data copies are not modifiable or deletable from the main system.  For this, blockchain-based food supply chain solutions may be deployed, which are not only resilient to hacking, but also allow suppliers and even consumers to track produce. Companies like Ripe.io, Walmart Global Tech, Nestle and Wholechain deploy blockchain for food supply management since it provides overall process transparency, improves trust issues in the transactions, enables traceable and tamper-resistant records and allows accessibility and visibility of data provenance. Extensive recovery plans with multiple copies of essential data and servers in secure, physically separated locations, such as hard drives, storage devices, cloud or distributed ledgers should be adopted in addition to deploying operations plans for critical functions in case of system outages. For core processes which are not labour-intensive,  including manual operation methods may be used to reduce digital dependence. Network segmentation, updates or patches for operating systems, software, and firmware are additional steps which can be taken to secure smart agricultural technologies. 

References

1. Muddy Machines website, Accessed 26 July 2024.  https://www.muddymachines.com/ 
2. “Meat giant JBS pays $11m in ransom to resolve cyber-attack”, BBC, 10 June 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57423008 
3. Marshall, Claire & Prior, Malcolm, “Cyber security: Global food supply chain at risk from malicious hackers.”, BBC, 20 May 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61336659 
4. “Ransomware Attacks on Agricultural Cooperatives Potentially Timed to Critical Seasons.”, Private Industry Notification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 20 April  https://www.ic3.gov/Media/News/2022/220420-2.pdf. 
5. Manning, Louise & Kowalska, Aleksandra. (2023). “The threat of ransomware in the food supply chain: a challenge for food defence”, Trends in Organized Crime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-023-09516-y 
6. “NotPetya: the cyberattack that shook the world”, Economic Times, 5 March 2022. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/newsletters/ettech-unwrapped/notpetya-the-cyberattack-that-shook-the-world/articleshow/89997076.cms?from=mdr 
7. Abrams, Lawrence, “Dutch supermarkets run out of cheese after ransomware attack.”, Bleeping Computer, 12 April 2021. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dutch-supermarkets-run-out-of-cheese-after-ransomware-attack/ 
8. Pandey, Shipra; Gunasekaran, Angappa; Kumar Singh, Rajesh & Kaushik, Anjali, “Cyber security risks in globalised supply chains: conceptual framework”, Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing, January 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shipra-Pandey/publication/338668641_Cyber_security_risks_in_globalized_supply_chains_conceptual_framework/links/5e2678ae92851c89c9b5ac66/Cyber-security-risks-in-globalized-supply-chains-conceptual-framework.pdf 
9. Daley, Sam, “Blockchain for Food: 10 examples to know”, Builin, 22 March 2023 https://builtin.com/blockchain/food-safety-supply-chain 

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