During my research on business threats from social media, I found the ENISA (European Network & Information Security Agency) site. An arm of the EU government, this site provides much interesting information about hardware, software, and network procedural security. One of the links they provided in the reference section was to the Information Warfare Site. Yes. I know. It sounds a bit strange, maybe even pretentious or nerd-like. Even though it appears that this site hasn’t been updated for a while, they had an interesting idea there about which I’d like to talk. Excuse me. I’m not really talking, but you get it.
It’s a “Semantic Attack.”
A brief quote there, by Bruce Schneier, brought me to the phrase “semantic attack.” Indeed I had been recently searching my mind for such a phrase because I have become involved in explaining to clients the possibility of business threats which take the form of informational or content alteration, i.e. reality bending, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, or just out-and-out lying about a company or its products/services. Quite a mouthful, eh? That’s why I’ve been looking for a compact term to encapsulate this concept.
See? Semantic attack is more descriptive, word-efficient, and a lot sexier I might add. Before he introduced the term “semantic attack,” Bruce’s quote touched on two other types of internet attacks; the kind of which we have been seeing for a while. All three attack types are as follows:
- First Wave – Attacks that are targeted at the physical electronics of a computer system, (e.g. overloads).
- Second Wave – Syntactic attacks, targeting the computer’s operating logic, (e.g. viruses). (Parenthesis mine.)
And the attack type which is the subject of this post:
- Third Wave – Semantic attacks. “Will target data and it’s meaning. This includes fake press releases, false rumors, manipulated databases. The most severe semantic attacks will be against automatic systems, such as intelligent agents, remote-control devices, etc., that rigidly accept input and have limited ability to evaluate. Semantic attacks are much harder to defend against because they target meaning rather than software flaws. They play on security flaws in people, not in systems. Always remember: amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.”
Kudos to Bruce’s thoughts.
The Most Insidious of Attacks
Let’s think about this. Indeed semantic attacks would be the most severe and hardest against which to guard. (This idea that Bruce touches on relates to one that I explored in a recent post about the “insecurity” that exists when many people admit “friends” or connections into their social networks.) Security flaws in hardware and software can be detected, analyzed, and repaired more easily than flaws in the ways humans handle information. Humans are imperfect machines, while machines are, well, a little more perfect. Ironic, isn’t it? Especially since it is humans who design and build the machines. But that’s a whole different discussion.
Semantic attacks. So although this term is not perfect for the concept which I want to communicate, it’s getting close. To get closer I researched this idea more.
There is a school of thought out there that says that semantic attacks are something a bit different than the concept that Bruce puts forth. Uh-oh. Are we getting farther from the definition instead of closer? 
Perhaps. These definitions of the term “semantic attack” apply to such low-life activity as phishing scams and its accompanying URL modification. Check this link for a reference. Hmmm. This is getting farther away from the type of threat that I’m trying to illustrate. So, to pull this back on point, I’ll differentiate that phishing idea from what I’m trying to communicate. I’ll change the term slightly.
Instead of “attacks,” I’ll use the term “semantic strikes” to refer to the insidious modification of meaning in an effort, by opposing forces, to alter the image of a company. Insidious indeed. Semantic strikes. So how are these dangerous to a company? Whether intentional or unintentional, semantic strikes can be used in brand redefinition processes. Brand redefinition: an alteration of a brand’s image to be other than that as crafted by the brand shop of its owner.
Whose Brand Is It, Anway?
Now, as it’s been said many times, it’s really the consumer/customer who defines the brand long-term. Their experience with the product or service and the company creates the image of the brand in the mind of each individual. Collectively, those minds create the brand image. Ahh, there’s a problem; there’s the basis of a business threat. The brand reality is scattered out there among many different heads. And that reality may or may not be the same as that engineered by the brand’s managers, released on the brand’s birthday. So, if the brand reality is diffused; if the brand, in individuals’ minds, means things other than what the company intended, where’s the threat?
The threat is that if the brand image is not unified in the market segment, then management has essentially lost control. Loss of marketing control is not going to look good in the annual report. But if, as is said about price discrimination (where legal, that is), if the market can be sealed, then there is no threat. Well today, given social media, the market cannot be sealed against different “realities” of brand image. And as those different realities get splayed across computer screens around the globe, reality, brand reality that is, begins to change. Rapidly.
I’ll bet Bruce never envisioned this. He wrote has his quote about semantic attacks before social media really picked up speed, back there in the Web 1.0 days.
Before social media there was little opportunity for alternate brand realities to congregate, at least in any meaningful way. The market of minds was effectively “sealed.” Not so now. And Bruce’s term of “semantic attack” was coined long before social media found its legs. He foresaw the possibility of this happening, but perhaps not the probability. That probability has increased exponentially with social media.
Perception IS Reality
When that market of minds was essentially sealed, they could only, again in any meaningful way, be penetrated by mass media, “controlled” as many theorize (sometimes “conspiratorially”) by corporate interests, the same interests as those who owned the brands. But via social media that mind-control, if you will, has been diluted, decreased. Social media mitigates the effects of mass media on brand image messaging.
Remember the “Telephone Game” when you were a kid? You’d start a message at the front of a line of kids and relay the message verbally through perhaps 30 or 40 kids. Each kid got only one chance to whisper the message forward. By the time the message got to the last kid in the line, the message usually bore little resemblance to the message that started out in the front of the line. (I used to love that game.) Well, that, basically, is what can happen to brand images within social media. The brand message gets altered, rapidly, on a global scale.
Talk about cyber jitters!
Business Threat á la Sui Generis
I’ve been in the business world for a while. I’ve seen a lot of threats come, get handled, and then go away. But this one is different, because of the magnitude, because of human nature being what it is.
The measurement in social media of virality, velocity, and veracity is critical now. Of course, marketers will want to know how far and fast a message spreads. That was certainly important in the Web 1.0 days, and even prior to those times. But now with social media, veracity as a critical measurement comes into play. And its a factor that can not only be unintentionally modified (as in The Telephone Game), but also deliberately altered as in corporate subterfuge.
And you thought brand managers had enough to worry about.
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) But I will say this. Like the fabled Borg, Mommybloggers are a large, unstoppable, inexorable, relentless, overwhelming force furthering their agenda. They, and many other groups in social media, are a definite threat to the way business has been and continues to be done. For any business today, they certainly need to be understood.
