Creative Persuasion: A Study on Adversarial Behaviors and Strategies in Phishing Attacks.

ABSTRACT: Success of phishing attacks depend on effective exploitation of human weaknesses. This research explores a largely ignored, but crucial aspect of phishing: the adversarial behavior. We aim at understanding human behaviors and strategies that adversaries use, and how these may determine the end-user response to phishing emails. We accomplish this through a novel experiment paradigm involving two phases. In the adversarial phase, 105 participants played the role of a phishing adversary who were incentivized to produce multiple phishing emails that would evade detection and persuade end-users to respond. In the end-user phase, 340 participants performed an email management task, where they examined and classified phishing emails generated by participants in phase-one along with benign emails.

SUBMITTER: Rajivan P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5826381 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature