When Digital Manuscripts Burn: Information Security and Digital Heritage in Eastern Europe

In Eastern Europe, the growing digitalization of memory and heritage goes hand in hand with instrumentalization of the past. Memory wars raging within and between post-socialist states are increasingly projected into digital spaces, where different historical narratives compete for users’ attention. Under these conditions, both conventional and non-conventional actors increasingly weaponize digital heritage to mobilize supporters and stigmatize opponents. To do so, these actors selectively use contents of online archives and museums to promote or undermine specific interpretations of the past. Yet, as digital heritage turns into another weapon in the ongoing political struggles, it also becomes a possible target of adversarial attacks used to manipulate or destroy it. In our paper, we discuss the ongoing digitalization of digital heritage in Eastern Europe from the information security point of view. For this purpose, we critically review existing literature on the information security in the domain of digital heritage and couple it with the discussion of known instances of adversarial attacks against online museums and collections in the Eastern European context. Using the CIA model (i.e. confidentiality, integrity and availability), we classify most common types of attacks against digital heritage and discuss the possible short- and long-term implications of these attacks for collective memory practices in the region. We conclude by proposing several strategies for countering adversarial attacks and safeguarding digital heritage which take into account specific technical and political aspect of digital remembrance in Eastern European countries