Towards A New Model for Information Warfare

In the current information-rich environment, it has become routine to broadcast and receive information via the media and most importantly the Internet. And with such flexibility in the distribution of information and its channels comes the huge risk of the information being compromised, tampered with, or corrupted. Such intentional acts of compromising and corrupting information for a certain goal constitute what is known as Information Warfare. Because Information Warfare can be carried out on different forms of communication and channels in information flows, devising a model to simulate the attacks is vital to analyse and prevent information tampering. Many models have been proposed that use an array of underlying theories that range from schematic modelling, to information science and cognitive studies. However, the problem is that modelling the Information Warfare battle theatre using existing modelsresults in tabular and tree schemas that are populated by percentages and numbers, which reflect the information attack but in a difficult and non-visualized manner. In this paper, attempts will be made to introduce a new modelling scheme to capture the elements of Information Warfare, including the participating parties, attacks, channels, and noise in the form of models that use information flow and visible entities. Because Information Warfare can have many forms, and can be made at several levels, several existing models lack some design elements that are critical in capturing the attacks. The model developed here will investigate, precisely, the information exchanged between the entities and their state. Information exchange can show where information is from and where it is destined to go, while, entity states provide what type of information is flowing. The methods of the modelling proposed in this paper incorporate several established modelling methods that include Information Flow Model and Game Theory, and forms of asynchronous communication.