CactusCon

CactusCon13
February 14-15, 2025
Mesa, AZ

Malware of the Mind - Disinformation and Manipulation via Social Platforms

While disinformation has been around since the age of antiquity, in recent years it has taken centerstage as a highly disruptive force. In this talk I make some comparison cases for how malware and expanding compromise in a computing environment, has direct parallels to how biases and heuristics are exploited in human cognitive software during a disinformation campaign. The talk will conclude with the introduction of a disinformation kill chain.

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Keynote: Charles Shirer

Charles Shirer is a penetration tester and consultant with 17 years of overall IT operations experience, with the last 6 years in Information Security. On Twitter he regularly posts inspiring and encouraging Magnificent Monday videos, and is known as the most positive person in security. He is a regular host or guest on multiple podcasts, including GrumpyHackers, HackThePlanet, and Positively Blue Team Cast, and is a part of the MentalHealthHackers, DeadPixelSec, NovaHackers, and HackingIsNotACrime families. He works as staff for several security conferences, and somewhere in his free time works on the penetration testing focused linux distribution SECBSD based on OpenBSD.

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