Google Search Results Listings Can Be Manipulated For Propaganda (zdnet.com)

A feature of the Google search engine lets threat actors alter search results in a way that could be used to push political propaganda, oppressive views, or promote fake news. From a report: The feature is known as the "knowledge panel" and is a box that usually appears at the right side of the search results, usually highlighting the main search result for a very specific query. For example, searching for Barack Obama would bring a box showing information from Barack Obama's Wikipedia page, along with links to the former president's social media profiles. But Wietze Beukema, a member of PwC's Cyber Threat Detection & Response team, has discovered that you can hijack these knowledge panels and add them to any search query, sometimes in a way that pushes legitimate search results way down the page, highlighting an incorrect result and making it look legitimate. The way this can be done is by first searching for a legitimate item, and pressing the "share" icon that appears inside a knowledge panel.

Comments

I came for the news.

[Fly Swatter]

Didn't see any here, but stayed for the comments anyway.

Sweet!

[SuperKendall]

This has to be the ultimate trolling tool, going to be seeing this used a ton!

Re:Sweet!

[Rei]

I'm loving this. Why say something yourself when you can make Google assert it as a fact for you? ;)

DDG

[fbobraga]

FTW!

Re:DDG

[recrudescence]

DDG will become as bad as Google if it's allowed to grow. Its founder already has no problems lying about your anonymity and monetizes your data

Please elaborate; otherwise it just sounds like a generic shill statement. It is no secret that DDG relies on 'data' from users in the broader sense (it *is* a search query engine). But that is a far cry from implying it does so in a way that is personally invasive like google.

This is truly an important discovery

[forkfail]

By publicizing this incredibly important discovery, the path is made clear for accusations of election meddling and haxoring!

Super important security discovery. I expect to see it trend on twitter soon, it's so revolutionary and novel and significant. And ominous. Definitely ominous.

Re:/. Submissions can be manipulated for propogand

[nwaack]

Despite the last sentence being an obvious troll, the rest of this is pretty spot on. When Obama and his minions took advantage of the internet to help win the election, he was declared a super-genius for doing so and most of the left would've happily felaciated the internet if it were a physical being. But as soon as Trump won...ORANGE MAN BAD, so INTERNET BAD TOO!!!

Chuckle

[nehumanuscrede]

Not necessarily news for the Slashdot crowd, but the people running this country really don't have a clue and might actually be surprised at such things.

See: Series of Tubes as an example.

Re:Chuckle

[SuricouRaven]

Law and politics are long-term careers. To reach the top takes decades of career advancement - which means the people who occupy them now generally grew up in a time when computer technology was known to the public only as sci-fi movie props showing spinning tape drives and rampaging robots. That they understand technology today at all is a sign of impressive adaptability, given how rapidly it has advanced. The IBM PC is less than fourty years old, and internet access has been available to the public at large for less than thirty. When the first provider started making access to Usenet available to anyone with money and a modem, John McCain was already 56.

Miserable failure

[spaceyhackerlady]

People have been gaming Google for ages. Remember "miserable failure"? Remember the fake 404 page for "weapons of mass destruction"?

...laura

Re:Miserable failure

[SvnLyrBrto]

Also: "more evil than satan himself", "French military victories", and "Santorum".

BFD.

As you say, screwing with search results has been possible since forever; and was never limited just to Google either. All it takes is a number of like-minded pissed-off people, and you can turn a bigot into a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter.

Re:Miserable failure

[rtb61]

That's alright, Google has been gaming people for a long time, especially since the Alphabet era. Google search results are already manipulated for propaganda purposes, easier just to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck....

This story strikes me as a redundant story from the department of redundancy, seemingly to distract from Google directly politicising search results, youtube is particularly bad, which now loves US corporate main stream news to the exclusion of all else.

This is interesting, why the hate?

[Paxtez]

At first I thought this was about SEOs or something, but it is a legit attack/bug/thing. I've never seen anyone post about this issue before.
This just allows you to attach any info panel to any search result. So you could make one:
"Where was Obama Born" and have it show a full width info box about the planet Mars. Which definitely makes it seem that Google says he was born on Mars.
https://www.google.com/search?...

This would be good for businesses too. Make a URL for "What is the best restaurant in Chicago" with the info panel for you business, and put that link on your site.

This will totally get fixed. I guess it will bet set that if you go to a url with a search and info panel, ensure that the info panel would display with that search.

I think Rick Santorum already knew this

[almostadnsguy]

Didn't anyone hear about this before? http://www.spreadingsantorum.c... If you know how it works of course you can "manipulate" it. How is this news?

Fascinating

[farble1670]

You know what else you can do? You make make a search for bacon return data about eggs, or make a search for Obama return results only from fox.com.

Fascinating.