Conspiracy theories rise after global IT crash

WASHINGTON: From fearmongering about a looming “World War III” to false stories linking a cabal of global elites to a cyberattack, a major IT crash sparked a flood of conspiracy theories online on Friday.

Airlines, banks, TV channels and financial institutions were thrown into disarray after the crash, one of the largest in recent years. The crash was caused by a faulty software update to an antivirus program on Microsoft Windows.

The spread of conspiracy theories on social media platforms, many of which have removed the restrictions that once prevented the spread of disinformation, illustrates the new reality of information chaos after a major global event.

The outage led to a flood of messages on X, Elon Musk’s website formerly known as Twitter, without any evidence. An apocalyptic story was spread: the world was under attack by an evil force.

“I read somewhere that World War III would be primarily a cyber war,” wrote one user on X.

The IT crash also led to an unfounded theory that the World Economic Forum, long a magnet for wild lies, had been planning a global cyberattack.

To make that theory seem credible, many posts referenced an old WEF video warning of the possibility of a “cyberattack with Covid-like characteristics.”

The video, available on the WEF website, warned that the exponential spread of the cyber threat can only be stopped by disconnecting millions of vulnerable devices from each other and from the internet.

‘Sad testament’

The WEF has long been a target for conspiracy theorists who promote the idea of ​​a shadowy cabal of elites working for their own gain under the guise of solving global problems.

Conspiracy theories quickly gained traction online, too, with the hashtag “cyber polygon” used, referring to a global training event to prepare for possible future attacks.

“The spread of conspiracy theories following major global events like the outage is a sad testament to the volatile nature of the information ecosystem,” Rafi Mendelsohn, vice president of disinformation security firm Cyabra, told AFP.

“What is unique about these types of events is that social media platforms, forums and messaging apps enable the rapid dissemination of content, allowing theories to quickly gain traction and reach a global audience.”

This trend shows that lies can turn into viral stories on technology platforms, which have scaled back content moderation and reinstated accounts known to spread disinformation.

During rapidly developing news events, confusion often reigns on major technology platforms, with users scrambling to extract accurate information from what appears to be a sea of ​​false or misleading messages that are quickly gaining popularity.

‘Shameful motives’

“This raises the larger question of how we combat misinformation and disinformation,” Michael W. Mosser, director of the Global Disinformation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, told AFP.

“The level of trust required to accept information from reliable sources has declined so much that people are more likely to believe wild conspiracy theories that ‘must be true’ than the factual information they are told.”

The global outage, which shut down many aspects of daily life and sent US stock prices plunging, was linked to a bug in an update to an antivirus program for Windows systems from US cybersecurity group CrowdStrike.

Assurances from the Austin-based company’s CEO, George Kurtz, that CrowdStrike had rolled out a fix and was “actively working” to resolve the crisis did little to quell the spread of conspiracy theories online.

“It’s difficult to combat this misinformation with factual refutations because it’s such a technical topic,” Mosser said.

“The explanation that the bug was in a misconfigured system file and that a fix is ​​being worked on may be correct, but people who are inclined to see dark motives behind the bugs do not believe it.”