The Eurecat technology centre is taking part in the European Athena project which is to develop tools to analyse and combat disinformation and misinformation on the Internet, seen by the World Economic Forum as the greatest global risk over the next two years.
The Athena (An exposition on THe forEign informatioN mAnipulation and interference) project is part of the European Union’s strategic response to the burgeoning threats of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) such as the recent rise in cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns in several countries.
The project “will scrutinise 30 threat cases along with the tactics, techniques and procedures used by their perpetrators to assess their social impact and draw up countermeasures,” says Juan Caubet, director of the IT&OT Security Unit at the Eurecat technology centre.
“The Athena project is not just a response to current threats but a proactive step towards a more secure digital future for Europe,” says project coordinator and Trilateral Research director David Wright.
The consortium will also conduct a comparative legal and regulatory analysis of how eight EU Member States deal with FIMI threats to identify areas where policy can be improved. It will additionally draw up a questionnaire for public use to enable people to spot this kind of threat.
Disinformation in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024
The Global Risks Report 2024, which explores and identifies the risks facing society and the global economy in the short and medium term, points to disinformation and misinformation as the most serious global risk anticipated over the next two years.
The study, which the World Economic Forum publishes every year and brings together the views of a number of experts from academia, business, government and civil society, warns that this disinformation will be used to ramp up social and political divisions and there is a risk of erosion of human rights as some repressive authorities attempt to stamp out the proliferation of misinformation.
The report says that new technologies and large-scale artificial intelligence models have prompted an increase in misinformation on the internet or what is called synthetic media ranging from voice cloning to website spoofing.
Extreme weather events and societal polarisation are the second and third biggest risks identified in the short term, followed by cyber insecurity and cybercrime in fourth place.
The Athena European project consortium
The Athena consortium has a €3 million budget and is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme.
The project partners are universities, research centres and organisations from eleven European countries: Trilateral Research, the project coordinator, Eurecat, the Maldita.es Foundation, the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), the University of Cyprus, the Bavarian Police Academy, the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Storyzy, Trinity College Dublin, the European Organisation for Security, EU-Disinfo and University College Dublin.
