Deceptive Mechanism Research Articles

Deception mechanisms of FDA‒AWACS against passive monopulse angle measurements

AbstractAirborne warning and control systems (AWACS) serve as critical command and control centres in air combat operations, making them prime targets for strategic attacks. These enemy attacks typically rely on the accurate determination of AWACS combat positions using different direction‐finding devices. In particular, passive monopulse angle measurement systems locate AWACS by measuring the angles of signals emitted by AWACS radiation sources, thus rendering them vulnerable to attacks. Given the criticality of the airborne radars of AWACS in battle command and control operations, they must function continuously to monitor air and sea targets. Hence, AWACS cannot effectively evade electronic reconnaissance systems through tactics such as radar shutdown. To explore alternative measures, the authors investigate the deception mechanisms of an integrated frequency diverse array AWACS (FDA‒AWACS) against passive monopulse angle measurements. Using an established FDA signal model, the principles underlying two common monopulse angle measurement methods are first outlined. Subsequently, the angle estimation formulae typically used by these monopulse angle measurement systems to interpret received FDA radiation signals are derived. Additionally, the transmit beampatterns, amplitude patterns, and angle measurement deception capabilities of several typical FDAs are examined. Simulation results indicate that the FDA‒AWACS can theoretically deceive passive monopulse angle measurement systems to a certain extent. However, one‐dimensional uniform linear FDAs and other arrays using sinusoidal frequency offsets exhibit limited deception abilities. In contrast, arrays utilising cubic and quartic frequency offset achieve angle measurement errors exceeding 2° in far‐field scenarios.

Floral signals of the dimorphic oil-producing Byrsonima sericea (Malpighiaceae): is the eglandular morph deceptive?

ABSTRACT Background Presence of eglandular individuals (lacking floral oil glands) within populations of several neotropical Malpighiaceae is intriguing, with ecological and evolutionary implications so far unexplored. This floral dimorphism (glandular and eglandular individuals) is hypothesised to be related to energetic costs of oil production and pollinator deception. Aims To evaluate whether eglandular individuals of Byrsonima sericea deceive oil-collecting bees and obtain higher reproductive success (fruit production) compared to glandular individuals. Methods We monitored flower visitation and quantified and identified floral cues (visual and olfactory) associated with glandular and eglandular individuals, and measured fruit set. Results Both morphotypes exhibited similar visual cues and proportions of visits by oil-collecting bees and similar fruit set. Floral scent via headspace analysis indicated no between-morphotype differences in biogenic volatile organic compounds, whilst flower extract samples showed a clear difference in chemical composition. Conclusions Absence of oil production in B. sericea was not associated with changes in floral cues used in pollinator attraction at long distances. Maintenance of floral cues may be a deceptive mechanism that maintains the oil-collecting behaviour of bees on flowers that lack oil glands. Higher fruit set was not observed in eglandular individuals, suggesting that energetic costs associated with oil production do not involve fruit production.

ChatGPT Isn't Magic

ChatGPT Isn't Magic

Jointly Defending DeepFake Manipulation and Adversarial Attack Using Decoy Mechanism.

Highly realistic imaging and video synthesis have become possible and relatively simple tasks with the rapid growth of generative adversarial networks (GANs). GAN-related applications, such as DeepFake image and video manipulation and adversarial attacks, have been used to disrupt and confound the truth in images and videos over social media. DeepFake technology aims to synthesize high visual quality image content that can mislead the human vision system, while the adversarial perturbation attempts to mislead the deep neural networks to a wrong prediction. Defense strategy becomes difficult when adversarial perturbation and DeepFake are combined. This study examined a novel deceptive mechanism based on statistical hypothesis testing against DeepFake manipulation and adversarial attacks. First, a deceptive model based on two isolated sub-networks was designed to generate two-dimensional random variables with a specific distribution for detecting the DeepFake image and video. This research proposes a maximum likelihood loss for training the deceptive model with two isolated sub-networks. Afterward, a novel hypothesis was proposed for a testing scheme to detect the DeepFake video and images with a well-trained deceptive model. The comprehensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed decoy mechanism could be generalized to compressed and unseen manipulation methods for both DeepFake and attack detection.

Altered neural mechanisms of deception in individuals with autistic traits

A successful deception involves making a decision, acting on it, and evaluating results. Here, we investigated deception in a non-clinical sample (n = 36) with varying autism traits using a coin-toss paradigm of active deception. The subjects were asked to react to the instructions by clicking one of the two boxes that could mislead their opponents, followed by feedback on their success or failure. During this reaction, their EEG activity was recorded, and the results suggested that people with high autistic traits exhibited longer reaction times and lower amplitude of P3 in the decision-making stage compared to individuals with low autistic traits. The feedback evaluation stage in the high autistic trait group elicited lower amplitude of FRN and P3. Overall, these results indicated that people with high autistic traits experienced difficulties in deceiving, which could be related to atypical neural mechanisms.

Values in Emotion Artificial Intelligence Hiring Services: Technosolutions to Organizational Problems

Despite debates about emotion artificial intelligence's (EAI) validity, legality, and social consequences, EAI is increasingly present in the high stakes context of hiring, with potential to shape the future of work and the workforce. The values laden in technology play a significant role in its societal impact.We conducted qualitative content analysis on the public-facing websites (N=229) of EAI hiring services. We identify the organizational problems that EAI hiring services claim to solve and reveal the values emerging in desired EAI uses as promoted by EAI hiring services to solve organizational problems. Our findings show that EAI hiring services market their technologies as technosolutions to three purported organizational hiring problems: 1) hiring (in)accuracy, 2) hiring (mis)fit, and 3) hiring (in)authenticity. We unpack these problems to expose how these desired uses of EAI are legitimized by the corporate ideals of data-driven decision making, continuous improvement, precision, loyalty, and stability. We identify the unfair and deceptive mechanisms by which EAI hiring services claim to solve the purported organizational hiring problems, suggesting that they unfairly exclude and exploit job candidates through EAI's creation, extraction, and affective commodification of a candidate's affective value through pseudoscientific approaches. Lastly, we interrogate EAI hiring service claims to reveal the core values that underpin their stated desired use: techno-omnipresence, techno-omnipotence, and techno-omniscience. We show how EAI hiring services position desired use of their technology as a moral imperative for hiring organizations with supreme capabilities to solve organizational hiring problems, then discuss implications for fairness, ethics, and policy in EAI-enabled hiring within the US policy landscape.

The Origins of Human Amenability to Propaganda

The author examines the main psychological characteristics of a person that have made him susceptible to the influence of other people, including propaganda. The subject of the study is these features of the human psyche. There are several main blocks of these psychological features: from imitation of parents and interaction in a team, where people are affected by mechanisms of deception and self-deception in order to convince others more effectively and rate themselves higher, to interaction within the social hierarchy, it is considered which strategies are more effective, and how this influences on the mechanisms of deception and self-deception. Using mathematical modeling methods, game theory and algorithms written in the python programming language, the author analyzes the most effective mechanisms of interaction among people in the social hierarchy, which contributed to the development of culture and deception, making a person more tricky. It is noted that the growth of what is commonly called "civility" is not so much a "herd" or "weakness", as it is sometimes estimated (the most famous example of such an assessment is Friedrich Nietzsche), as a trick, due to the fact that it is a more effective method of promotion in the social hierarchy and the struggle for power.

Dynamic Hypergames for Synthesis of Deceptive Strategies With Temporal Logic Objectives

In this paper, we study the use of deception for strategic planning in adversarial environments. We model the interaction between the agent (player 1) and the adversary (player 2) as a two-player concurrent stochastic game in which the adversary has incomplete information about the agent’s task specification given as a temporal logic formula. During the interaction, the adversary can infer the agent’s intention from observations and adapt its strategy so as to prevent the agent from satisfying the objective. To plan against such an adaptive opponent, the agent must leverage its knowledge about the adversary’s incomplete information to influence the behavior of the opponent, and thereby be deceptive. To synthesize a deceptive strategy, we introduce a class of hypergame models that capture the interaction between the agent and its adversary given asymmetric, incomplete information. We develop a solution concept for this class of hypergames and show that the subjectively rationalizable strategy for the agent is deceptive and maximizes the probability of satisfying the task in temporal logic. Such a deceptive strategy is obtained by modeling the opponent’s evolving perception of the agent’s objective and integrating it into planning. This allows the agent to manipulate the opponent’s perception so as to induce the opponent into taking actions that benefit the agent. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our deceptive planning algorithm using robot motion planning examples with temporal logic objectives and design a detection mechanism to notify the agent of potential errors in modeling the adversary’s behavior. Note to Practitioners—Many security and defense applications employ deception mechanisms for strategic advantages. This work presents a game-theoretic framework for planning deceptive strategies in stochastic environments and shows that the opponent modeling plays a key role in the design of effective deception mechanisms. For applications to cyber-physical security, the practitioners can employ temporal logic for specifying security properties in the system and analyze defense with deception using the proposed methods.

The role of conflict processing mechanism in deception responses

A considerable number of studies have described the potential neural mechanism of deception, but most deception studies have relied upon deception from experimental supervisor instruction. Experimental control (participants follow instructions to deceive without any risk) means that the deception occurs in a way that does not come close to the real deception. In the current study, a neural imaging experiment on deception closer to the real deception was conducted. Event-related potential (ERP) and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) techniques were used to explore the neural mechanism of deception. The results showed that deceptive response evoked larger medial-frontal negativity (MFN) and smaller response-locked positivity (RLP) than truthful response. We interpret these findings to indicate that conflict detection and emotional processing are associated with deception. In addition, magnitudes of alpha and beta oscillations after the deceptive response were significantly smaller than those after the truthful response, demonstrating that deception is associated with neural oscillations reflecting conflict adjustment. The results comprehensively characterized the physiological properties of the brain oscillations elicited by a deceptive response and provided a theoretical foundation for detection in practical applications.

Defeating Super-Reactive Jammers With Deception Strategy: Modeling, Signal Detection, and Performance Analysis

This paper develops a novel framework to defeat a super-reactive jammer, one of the most difficult jamming attacks to deal with in practice. Specifically, the jammer has an unlimited power budget and is equipped with the self-interference suppression capability to simultaneously attack and listen to the transmitter’s activities. Consequently, dealing with super-reactive jammers is very challenging. Thus, we introduce a smart deception mechanism to attract the jammer to continuously attack the channel and then leverage jamming signals to transmit data based on the ambient backscatter communication technology. To detect the backscattered signals, the maximum likelihood detector can be adopted. However, this method is notorious for its high computational complexity and requires the model of the current propagation environment as well as channel state information. Hence, we propose a deep learning-based detector that can dynamically adapt to any channels and noise distributions. With a Long Short-Term Memory network, our detector can learn the received signals’ dependencies to achieve a performance close to that of the optimal maximum likelihood detector. Through simulation and theoretical results, we demonstrate that with our approaches, the more power the jammer uses to attack the channel, the better bit error rate performance the transmitter can achieve.

Effective Connectivity in Cortical Networks During Deception: A Lie Detection Study Based on EEG.

Thus far, when deception behaviors occur, the connectivity patterns and the communication between different brain areas remain largely unclear. In this study, the most important information flows (MIIFs) between different brain cortices during deception were explored. First, the guilty knowledge test protocol was employed, and 64 electrodes' electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded from 30 subjects (15 guilty and 15 innocent). Cortical current density waveforms were then estimated on the 24 regions of interest (ROIs). Next, partial directed coherence (PDC), an effective connectivity (EC) analysis was applied in the cortical waveforms to obtain the brain EC networks for four bands: delta (1-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz). Furthermore, using the graph theoretical analysis, the network parameters with significant differences in the EC network were extracted as features to identify the two groups. The high classification accuracy of the four bands demonstrated that the proposed method was suitable for lie detection. In addition, based on the optimal features in the classification mode, the brain "hub" regions were identified, and the MIIFs were significantly different between the guilty and innocent groups. Moreover, the fronto-parietal network was found to be most prominent among all MIIFs at the four bands. Furthermore, combining the neurophysiology significance of the four frequency bands, the roles of all MIIFs were analyzed, which could help us to uncover the underlying cognitive processes and mechanisms of deception.

Entice to Trap: Enhanced Protection against a Rate-Aware Intelligent Jammer in Cognitive Radio Networks

Anti-jamming in cognitive radio networks (CRN) is mainly accomplished using machine learning techniques in the domains of frequency, coding, power and rate. Jamming is a major threat to CRN because it can cause severe performance damage such as network isolation, network application interruption and even physical damage to infrastructure simple radio devices. With the improvement in communication technologies, the capabilities of adversaries are also increased. The intelligent jammer knows the rate at which users transmit data, which is based on the attractiveness factor of each user. The higher the data rate for a secondary user, the more attractive it is to the rate-aware jammer. In this paper, we present a dummy user in the network as a honeypot of the jammer to get the jammer’s attention. A new anti-jamming deceiving theoretical method based on rate modifications is introduced to increase the bandwidth efficiency of the entire cognitive radio-based communication system. We employ a defensive anti-jamming deception mechanism of the Pseudo Secondary User (PSU) to as an entice to trap the attacker by providing thus enhanced protection for the rest of the network from the impact of the attacker. Our analytical simulation results show a significant improvement in performance using the proposed solution. The utility of the proposed intelligent anti-jamming algorithm lies in its applications to support the secondary wireless sensor nodes.

SARS-CoV-2: Some Aspects of Molecular Evolution, Cellular Pathogenesis, and Immune System Mechanism Elusion

The purpose of this review is to address some of the latest aspects regarding molecular features, pathogenic mechanisms, and immune system response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), based on recent publications in this field from March 2020 to May 2021. Interpretation keys for periodic re-emergence of coronavirus infections and other lethal viral pandemics are suggested. Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) and other potential mechanisms of immune system deception are put forward. Therefore, vaccine development must take into account ADE and other unwanted side effects of immune-based medical intervention. Features reported in our review will allow both clinicians and basic science researchers to take home ideas to improve their knowledge about SARS-CoV-2.

Protecting Multi-Function Wireless Systems From Jammers With Backscatter Assistance: An Intelligent Strategy

In this paper, we present a novel unified framework to protect multi-function wireless systems from jamming attacks. Examples of such multi-function system include joint radar and communication (JRC) systems and simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems. By abstracting the system functionalities as a joint optimization problem of multiple queues, we achieve effective resistance against jammers for the multi-functions simultaneously. We incorporate different anti-jamming techniques into one framework. Deception mechanism is adopted to lure the jammer to attack and make its actions more predictable, and ambient backscatter technology is used to leverage the jamming signals. Since conventional Markov decision process (MDP) has only one decision epoch at every time slot, it cannot be used to model the deception strategy which needs two decision epochs to leverage the jamming signals. We therefore formulate the problem using an advanced two-step MDP. After that, a deep reinforcement learning algorithm with a prioritized double deep Q-Learning architecture is proposed to learn optimal strategies in different system states. We show that by jointly considering the multi-functions of the system with potential jamming attacks during design phase, significant improvement can be achieved for both of the system functionalities.

Il velo della finzione. La novella decameroniana di Arriguccio e monna Sismonda

This article analyses the novella of Arriguccio and Monna Sismonda (Decameron VII 8), studying both its specific setting and the rhetorical and literary features that shape it. The first sections are dedicated to reconstructing the historical framework that serves as a backdrop to the theme of marital deceit, i.e. marriages between parvenu merchants and women of impoverished noble families (the so-called ‘ingentilire per moglie’) that characterised thirteenth-century social ‘mobility’ in Florence. The core of the article is dedicated to the narrative mechanisms of deception and the models that may have served as inspiration for Boccaccio, with the aim of identifying the possible ties between this novella and the fabliau tradition, while at the same time analysing the intratextual connections with other stories in the Decameron (in particular, III 3 and VII 8). The study concludes by examining the complex symbolism associated with the thread and the veil, both of which are profoundly linked to the female sphere (including a comparison with III 2).

Pollination success in three tropical dry forest orchid species from Mexico: insights from floral display, visitation rates, and flower micromorphology

Background: Despite long-lasting efforts to disentangle the drivers of orchid pollination, pollination success in tropical dry forest orchids remains largely unknown.
 Questions and hypothesis: How successful are pollination in three tropical dry forest orchids? How is pollination influenced by floral display and floral rewards (as suggested by floral micromorphology)? We hypothesized a positive effect of floral display on pollinia removal and deposition rates.
 Studied species: Barkeria whartoniana (C. Schweinf.) Soto Arenas, Clowesia dodsoniana E. Aguirre, and Cyrtopodium macrobulbon (La Llave & Lex.) G.A. Romero & Carnevali.
 Study site and dates: Nizanda (Oaxaca), Mexico; flowering periods of 2013 and 2014.
 Methods: We calculated pollinia removal and deposition rates, identified floral visitors and analyzed flower microstructure to search for structures potentially producing rewards. Floral display was measured through number of open flowers, and number and length of inflorescences, and its effect on pollination success was assessed through linear modeling.
 Results: Pollinia removal rates were higher than deposition rates, and floral display was related to pollination success in C. dodsoniana only. Visitation rates were low for the three species and most visitors were not true pollinators. The three species possess potentially secreting structures, but for B. whartoniana and C. macrobulbon these rewards are likely part of the pollinator deception mechanism.
 Conclusions: The generalized low pollination success implies the need for high population densities of both interacting parts. We emphasize the need for integrated evaluations of different aspects of the plant-pollinator interaction.

The Inquiline Ant Myrmica karavajevi Uses Both Chemical and Vibroacoustic Deception Mechanisms to Integrate into Its Host Colonies.

Simple SummaryAlthough fiercely defended by workers, ant societies can be infiltrated by social parasites that exploit the whole colony and its resources, instead of taking advantage of a single organism. Among them, we studied Myrmica karavajevi, a rare ant species in which the worker caste does not exist, and queens live as “inquilines” within colonies of another ant species, commonly Myrmica scabrinodis. Parasite queens entirely depend on host worker labour. They have evolved many adaptations to be admitted and integrate as members of the host ant society. Indeed, we found that, even at the pupal stage, the parasite is treated as a valuable item in the colony hierarchy, as it is rescued ahead of the colony’s own brood. Moreover, we discovered that M. karavajevi adult queens use two strategies to live undisturbed in the host nest. The parasite smells like the host queens by possessing specific odours and produces sounds similar to those emitted by M. scabrinodis ants, particularly by queens. Through these kinds of mimicking, M. karavajevi advances its rank towards the highest attainable position in the colony’s hierarchy. M. karavajevi is an outstanding example of multimodal deception, which needs a combined behavioural and molecular approach to be fully unravelled.Social parasitism represents a particular type of agonistic interaction in which a parasite exploits an entire society instead of a single organism. One fascinating form of social parasitism in ants is the “inquilinism”, in which a typically worker-less parasitic queen coexists with the resident queen in the host colony and produces sexual offspring. To bypass the recognition system of host colonies, inquilines have evolved a repertoire of deceiving strategies. We tested the level of integration of the inquiline Myrmica karavajevi within the host colonies of M. scabrinodis and we investigated the mechanisms of chemical and vibroacoustic deception used by the parasite. M. karavajevi is integrated into the ant colony to such an extent that, in rescue experiments, the parasite pupae were saved prior to the host’s brood. M. karavajevi gynes perfectly imitated the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of M. scabrinodis queens and the parasite vibroacoustic signals resembled those emitted by the host queens eliciting the same levels of attention in the host workers during playback experiments. Our results suggest that M. karavajevi has evolved ultimate deception strategies to reach the highest social status in the colony hierarchy, encouraging the use of a combined molecular and behavioural approach when studying host–parasite interactions.

A Look Into the Power of fNIRS Signals by Using the Welch Power Spectral Estimate for Deception Detection.

Neuroimaging technologies have improved our understanding of deception and also exhibit their potential in revealing the origins of its neural mechanism. In this study, a quantitative power analysis method that uses the Welch power spectrum estimation of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals was proposed to examine the brain activation difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior. The power value produced by the model was applied to quantify the activity energy of brain regions, which can serve as a neuromarker for deception detection. Interestingly, the power analysis results generated from the Welch spectrum estimation method demonstrated that the spontaneous deceptive behavior elicited significantly higher power than that from the controlled behavior in the prefrontal cortex. Meanwhile, the power findings also showed significant difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior, indicating that the reward system was only involved in the deception. The proposed power analysis method for processing fNIRS data provides us an additional insight to understand the cognitive mechanism of deception.

Duplicity Games for Deception Design With an Application to Insider Threat Mitigation

Recent incidents such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the SolarWinds hack have shown that traditional defense techniques are becoming insufficient to deter adversaries of growing sophistication. Proactive and deceptive defenses are an emerging class of methods to defend against zero-day and advanced attacks. This work develops a new game-theoretic framework called the duplicity game to design deception mechanisms that consist of a generator, an incentive modulator, and a trust manipulator, referred to as the GMM mechanism. We formulate a mathematical programming problem to compute the optimal GMM mechanism, quantify the upper limit of enforceable security policies, and characterize conditions on user's identifiability and manageability for cyber attribution and user management. We develop a separation principle that decouples the design of the modulator from the GMM mechanism and an equivalence principle that turns the joint design of the generator and the manipulator into the single design of the manipulator. A case study of dynamic honeypot configurations is presented to mitigate insider threats. The numerical experiments corroborate the results that the optimal GMM mechanism can elicit desirable actions from both selfish and adversarial insiders and consequently improve the security posture of the insider network. In particular, a proper modulator can reduce the \textcolor{black}{incentive misalignment} between the players and achieve win-win situations for the selfish insider and the defender. Meanwhile, we observe that the defender always benefits from faking the percentage of honeypots when the optimal generator is presented.

Neural mechanisms of deception in a social context: an fMRI replication study

Deception is a form of manipulation aimed at misleading another person by conveying false or truthful messages. Manipulative truthful statements could be considered as sophisticated deception and elicit an increased cognitive load. However, only one fMRI study reported its neural correlates. To provide independent evidence for sophisticated deception, we carried out an fMRI study replicating the experimental paradigm and Bayesian statistical approach utilized in that study. During the experiment, participants played a game against an opponent by sending deliberate deceptive or honest messages. Compared to truth-telling, deceptive intentions, regardless of how they were fulfilled, were associated with increased BOLD signals in the bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), left precuneus, and right superior temporal sulcus (STS). The right TPJ participates in the attribution of mental states, acting in a social context, and moral behaviour. Moreover, the other revealed brain areas have been considered nodes in the theory of mind brain neural system. Therefore, the obtained results reflect an increased demand for socio‑cognitive processes associated with deceptive intentions. We replicated the original study showing the involvement of the right TPJ and expanded upon it by revealing the involvement of the left TPJ, left precuneus and right STS in actions with deceptive intentions.