Cognitive hacking is a cyber attack where threat actors manipulate victims’ perceptions by exploiting their psychological weaknesses. Attackers primarily use disinformation in their campaigns to fuel people’s biases and prejudices.
Read More about Cognitive Hacking
The attack often brings about riots, protests, and, ultimately, revolutions, and we’ve seen these over time.
James Bone, in “Cognitive Hack: Trust, Deception and Blind Spots,” in fact, gave a fascinating quote regarding the attack. He said, “Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people.” And that’s precisely what happens in such a threat. So, instead of compromising a target computer network, attackers focus on people.
What Tools Usually Figure in Cognitive Hacking?
Since the attack relies on changing people’s perceptions, threat actors usually employ the tools below.
- Social media: Some 5.24 billion people troop to social networking sites as of 2025. Many of them could easily fall for misinformation or disinformation regarding people, particularly politicians and the world’s most influential business leaders. In fact, an average of 1.4 billion social media accounts get hacked each month.
- Fake news sites: Around 80% of adults in the U.S. alone have consumed fake news at one time or another. Like people who readily trust what they read on social media, those who knowingly or unknowingly frequent nontraditional news sources could be incited to change their perceptions of current events and act accordingly.
- Troll farms: These malicious companies that employ hundreds to thousands of disinformation spreaders online have grown in number over time.
Is Cognitive Hacking the Same as Spreading Fake News?
Given that fake news sites aren’t the only tools cognitive hackers use, we can say that spreading fake news is just a subset of the attack.
How Does Cognitive Hacking Work?
As far back as 2017, Trend Micro published an in-depth fake news study revealing various techniques attackers employ. These include:
- Creating a celebrity: Social media manipulation tactics have been observed where fabricated celebrity accounts are used to shape public perception. Documented cases show a four-stage process: acquiring an initial follower base (approximately 11,500 followers), increasing engagement through reposts and polls (55,000+ followers), attracting regional audiences (125,000+ followers), and expanding reach further (300,000+ followers). In such cases, the “celebrity” does not necessarily have to be a real person.
- Instigating a street protest: Social media has been exploited to mobilize real-world events, including the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack. Research indicates that such campaigns can be coordinated through illicit online services. Observed tactics include setting up 20 social media groups, each with at least 1,000 members, generating 50,000 retweets and 100,000 likes, and disseminating 10 fabricated news stories along with 50 supporting videos.
- Discrediting a journalist: Disinformation campaigns have been used to undermine journalists by artificially inflating false narratives and damaging reputations. Reports suggest that such operations, which can cost around US$55,000, may involve publishing a misleading news article designed to gain 50,000 reposts or likes per week and at least 100,000 views. Additionally, tactics have included flooding a journalist’s account with 200,000 bot followers—potentially leading to account suspension—and generating 12,000 malicious comments, each amplified by 10,000 retweets or likes.
What Are Examples of Cognitive Hacking Methods?
There are several ways to perform the attack and we named some below.
Cyberbullying and Harassment
At other times, actors target individuals with coordinated attacks to silence or discredit them. This type typically involves troll armies that intimidate whistleblowers or journalists.
Deepfake Proliferation
A deepfake uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create a realistic fake video, audio, or image file featuring an individual saying or doing things he/she never did. A fabricated video of a public figure making inflammatory statements is one example of this attack type.
Emotional Exploitation
This attack type involves crafting content that triggers strong emotional responses in people like fear, anger, or excitement to cloud their judgment and critical thinking. Using sensational headlines or writing emotionally charged posts designed to go viral are examples of emotional exploitation.
False Consensus Effect
In this attack, the attackers create the illusion that a specific opinion or behavior is more common or accepted than it actually is. It usually involves planting fake reviews or orchestrating fake public support for a product or cause.
Hoax Fabrication
Here, actors spread false reports about events to incite panic or distraction. Fake bomb threats or fabricated health crises are examples.
Information Overloading
Also known as “information flooding,” this tactic involves overwhelming people with excessive, contradictory, or confusing information to obscure facts or create apathy. Spamming forums or social networks with conflicting narratives during a crisis is a typical example.
Meme Warfare
This attack uses humorous, simple, or visually engaging memes to spread ideas quickly and subtly. Note that many memes typically distort historical facts or promote stereotypes.
Misinformation and Disinformation
Misinformation campaigns involve unintentionally spreading false information. Disinformation, meanwhile, involves deliberately creating and sharing false information to deceive or manipulate recipients. Fake news can be an example of both.
Phishing and Social Engineering
Probably the oldest among the tactics here, this involves crafting phishing emails or messages to manipulate recipients to divulge sensitive information. Fake urgent messages claiming your account will be locked unless you take immediate action is a notable example.
Poll and Survey Manipulation
This type uses biased surveys to shape public opinion or create misleading statistics.
To do that, filling a survey with loaded questions designed to elicit specific responses is critical.
Predictive Algorithm Manipulation
This type of attack is carried out by more technical-savvy attackers who exploit machine learning (ML) models or recommendation systems to push biased or harmful content. For instance, they can manipulate YouTube’s algorithm to suggest extremist videos.
Search Engine Manipulation
Also known as search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning,” this attack involves altering search engine algorithms to display predominantly biased, misleading, or harmful information. An example would be promoting conspiracy theories or propaganda sites so they would appear as top search results.
Social Media Manipulation
This type of attack involves using fake social media accounts or profiles to amplify certain messages or narratives. In some cases, threat actors rely on astroturfing or faking grassroots support for a particular cause by generating fake engagement. An example would be exerting coordinated efforts to sway public opinion by flooding platforms with targeted messages during elections.
How Can You Combat Cognitive Hacking?
Defending against such an attack requires individuals and organizations to:
- Develop media literacy and critical thinking skills
- Use fact-checking tools to verify information
- Implement advanced algorithms to detect manipulative content
- Stay aware to recognize and neutralize the attack’s effects
- Employ network access control (NAC) software to identify compromised devices and ensure only authorized users and devices can critical resources
Is Cognitive Hacking a Form of Cyber Propaganda?
Cyber propaganda is defined as fake news and hate speech content that often targets politicians and influential individuals. Given that, we can say that cognitive hacking is a means to instigate cyber propaganda. In this case, cyber propaganda would be the materials used in cognitive hacking attacks.
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We’ve seen the attack result in not just political and social unrest but also national instability.
Key Takeaways
- Cognitive hacking is a cyber attack where threat actors manipulate victims’ perceptions by exploiting their psychological weaknesses.
- Biases and prejudices play a massive part in making the attacks work. The targets should be easily duped into believing what the threat actors say.
- Social media, fake news sites, and troll farms are the usual hacking tools.
- Cognitive hackers employ at least three techniques to incite malicious action from their targets—creating a celebrity, instigating a street protest, and discrediting a journalist.
Other interesting terms…
