Cognitive Hacking: Manipulating Perception, Influencing Decisions
What is cognitive hacking?
Cognitive hacking, a form of psychological manipulation, is the manipulation of human cognition. It targets human perception and the decision-making processes, and involves manipulating individuals or groups into believing false information, liking something they would not think or like, or making decisions that are advantageous to the adversaries.
Human cognition is the mental processes involved in thinking, imagining, dreaming, hoping, knowing, remembering, judging, and solving problems.
Perception is the cognitive process by which we interpret information from our environment. It involves recognizing stimuli such as sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. This process is not merely passive reception of data but an active construction of reality, influenced by prior knowledge, experiences, and expectations.
Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. It is critical for information processing and is influenced by stimuli, individual interests, and goals.
Thinking encompasses all mental activities that involve processing information, such as reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. It includes concept formation (grouping objects, events, or ideas based on shared properties) and generating new and novel ideas or solutions.
Reasoning involves drawing specific conclusions and inferring the best explanation from incomplete or limited information.
Cognitive neuroscience explores the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive processes. It integrates psychology and neuroscience to understand how brain structures and functions relate to mental activities.
Human cognition can be exploited through techniques that target psychological vulnerabilities, biases, and the ways people process information. These techniques are designed to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential information, making poor decisions, or behaving in ways that benefit the adversaries.
Leveraging biases such as confirmation bias (favoring information that confirms existing beliefs) and authority bias (trusting information from perceived authority figures), adversaries can manipulate a target’s decisions. Using emotional manipulation (fear, sympathy, greed, or other strong emotions) they can influence a target’s behavior.
Adversaries spread inaccurate or misleading information to create confusion, mistrust, or false perceptions. They use lies, partial truths, or exaggerations. Engaging in seemingly innocuous conversations adversaries can extract valuable information from the targets without them realizing it. Observing the target’s activities, they gather data. Introducing false data, information and documents into the target’s environment they can mislead and create conflicts.
Adversaries use cognitive hacking in espionage and cyber espionage to manipulate human perception, behavior, and decision-making to gather intelligence, compromise operations, or influence outcomes.
They identify and exploit individuals within an organization who may be vulnerable due to financial troubles, ideological beliefs, or personal grievances. These insiders can be persuaded to provide information or perform actions beneficial to the adversaries. Using the suitable mix of blackmail, coercion, and bribery, adversaries can force insiders to divulge information or conduct espionage.
Insiders can install or spread trojan horses (malicious software disguised as legitimate programs, allowing adversaries to gain unauthorized access to systems and data), keyloggers (hardware or software that records keystrokes to capture login credentials and other sensitive information), and remote access tools - RATs (malware that provides attackers with remote control over the infected systems).
Insiders can also provide detailed information about other employees having access to sensitive data. Adversaries gather intelligence from insiders and the social media, and can target others in the organisation. Using personal information that are not online they succeed in phishing and spear-phishing attacks.
The human nature remains the same
Markus Wolf (1923 – 2006) was the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung - HVA), the foreign intelligence service of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany). The HVA belonged to the GDR Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit / MfS).
Wolf was renowned for his psychological manipulation techniques, which he used effectively to recruit spies, extract information, and destabilize opponents. The same techniques are also very effective today.
Wolf was adept at identifying the psychological and emotional vulnerabilities of his targets. He conducted thorough research on potential recruits, including their backgrounds, personal lives, and psychological profiles, to identify weaknesses that could be exploited. The HVA employed psychologists to create detailed personality profiles of targets, which helped in devising personalized manipulation strategies.
One of Wolf’s most effective techniques was using romantic and sexual relationships to manipulate individuals. Romeo agents were trained attractive male agents, known as Romeos, that seduced lonely and often emotionally vulnerable women in sensitive positions. These women, often secretaries with access to classified information, developed emotional dependencies on their Romeo agents, making them willing to provide valuable information.
Wolf exploited ideological beliefs and sympathies to recruit and manipulate individuals who were sympathetic to communist causes. He appealed to the ideological convictions of potential recruits, presenting espionage as a noble cause in the fight against Western capitalism. He leveraged the guilt felt by individuals in the West who opposed the policies of their own governments, convincing them that spying for East Germany was a way to fight for justice.
While less publicized, fear and intimidation were also part of the psychological manipulation toolkit. In cases where emotional manipulation was insufficient, Wolf’s operatives would use threats of exposure, blackmail, or harm to the target or their loved ones to coerce cooperation.
Wolf and his operatives were skilled at exploiting personal crises. They offered financial support to individuals in financial distress, creating a sense of indebtedness.
Markus Wolf’s success as a spymaster was largely due to his sophisticated use of psychological manipulation. By understanding human psychology, identifying vulnerabilities, and exploiting emotions, ideologies, and personal crises, he was able to recruit and manipulate individuals effectively. We must learn from these techniques to develop better defenses against similar manipulative tactics.
By educating employees about social engineering tactics, cognitive biases, and psychological manipulation techniques, companies and organisations increase vigilance and resistance to exploitation. The trainings must include realistic simulations to recognize and respond to espionage attempts.
You may also visit:
The cognitive battlespace: When the mind becomes the target
In the evolving domain of cyber conflict and hybrid warfare, the main battlespace is no longer solely defined by physical or digital terrain, it is the human mind. The fight to influence, manipulate, deceive, and destabilize the cognitive domain is being waged through asymmetric tools, of which cyber proxies are among the most potent and elusive.
Cyber proxies are increasingly leveraged by state and quasi-state actors not only to breach networks or steal data, but to shape narratives, inflame social divisions, and distort public perception. These operations are not purely technical; rather, they are multi-layered campaigns that blend cyber intrusions with information warfare, influence operations, and psychological manipulation. The ultimate objective is the cognitive influence over targeted populations, institutions, or leadership figures. In this sense, cyber proxies are not merely tactical tools, they are strategic instruments of perception warfare.
The legal, risk and compliance challenges posed by this shift are profound. Traditional legal frameworks are ill-equipped to manage actors who operate in legal gray zones, outside formal chains of command, and who cross the boundaries between national security threats and non-state cybercriminals. Attribution remains a core obstacle; states sponsoring these proxies frequently deny any formal relationship, despite evidence of coordination, resourcing, or ideological alignment. This ambiguity frustrates international responses under the law of state responsibility and makes it difficult to trigger proportional countermeasures under jus ad bellum or invoke collective defense mechanisms. For organizations in the private sector, this uncertainty complicates everything from insurance coverage decisions and incident response planning to disclosures under securities laws and breach notification statutes.
The intent of many cyber proxy campaigns is not to destroy or steal, but to manipulate belief systems, using hacked data selectively released to the media, fake personas amplified by botnets, or doctored videos engineered to erode trust in institutions. These influence operations often bypass technical defenses and exploit human psychology and social dynamics. They may aim to delegitimize government bodies, discredit corporate leadership, fuel societal unrest, or erode public trust in electoral systems, scientific expertise, or legal norms.
The battlefield becomes cognitive, fought not in firewalls and code, but in headlines, hashtags, and half-truths. For risk and compliance professionals, this raises serious questions about the scope of cybersecurity duties: how far must an organization go to defend against deception and disinformation that may not breach a system, but could cause reputational or operational collapse?
Organizations must consider that their employees, customers, and stakeholders may themselves become targets or unwilling amplifiers of proxy-driven influence operations. Social media manipulation, fabricated leaks, and deceptive digital narratives may be deployed to fracture internal cohesion, erode morale, or trigger public backlash. A single well-crafted falsehood, released at a moment of crisis, can generate far greater damage than a conventional breach, particularly if it is amplified by digital proxy networks aligned with hostile geopolitical interests.
Compliance frameworks and risk assessments must adapt to this broader definition of harm. It is no longer sufficient to focus exclusively on technical vulnerabilities or regulatory checklists. There must be institutional awareness of the cognitive dimension of risk, the susceptibility of employees and publics to targeted misinformation, psychological operations, and digitally enabled influence campaigns. Regulatory and governance structures must evolve to account for not only breaches of confidentiality, integrity, and availability, but also breaches of trust, coherence, and truth itself.
From a due diligence perspective, third-party risk assessments should be expanded to evaluate exposure to disinformation risks, supply chain perception vulnerabilities, and the potential for unwitting entanglement with state-linked proxy groups. Law firms, financial institutions, and multinational corporations must now think of reputation not only as a brand issue, but as a national security concern, because proxies operating in the cognitive domain seek to discredit, divide, and delegitimize rather than merely disrupt.
The use of cyber proxies to wage cognitive warfare represents a paradigm shift in how threats must be assessed and mitigated. As states increasingly compete not for territory but for influence, legitimacy, and narrative control, the mind itself becomes the terrain. For law, risk, and compliance professionals, the imperative is clear: organizations must defend not only their systems, but their stories, their stakeholders, and the truth.
Cyber Risk GmbH, some of our clients
