Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 43 views

    Understanding The Psychology of Scam Victims

    Uploaded by

    Richard
    Understanding the psychology of scam victims The document summarizes a study examining the psychology of scam victims in order to improve systems security. It analyzes various scams documented on the TV show "The Real Hustle" to extract seven recurring behavioral patterns exploited by scammers: 1) distraction, 2) social compliance, 3) herd mentality, 4) escalating dishonesty, 5) deception, 6) exploiting needs and greed, and 7) using time pressure. These principles are organized in a table showing their relative importance across different scam types. The work aims to help security engineers better understand "human factors" vulnerabilities rather than blame users, leading to more resilient security systems.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Understanding The Psychology of Scam Victims

    Uploaded by

    Richard
    43 views3 pages
    Understanding the psychology of scam victims The document summarizes a study examining the psychology of scam victims in order to improve systems security. It analyzes various scams documented on the TV show "The Real Hustle" to extract seven recurring behavioral patterns exploited by scammers: 1) distraction, 2) social compliance, 3) herd mentality, 4) escalating dishonesty, 5) deception, 6) exploiting needs and greed, and 7) using time pressure. These principles are organized in a table showing their relative importance across different scam types. The work aims to help security engineers better understand "human factors" vulnerabilities rather than blame users, leading to more resilient security systems.

    Original Description:

    Original Title

    Understanding The Psychology Of Scam Victims

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Understanding the psychology of scam victims The document summarizes a study examining the psychology of scam victims in order to improve systems security. It analyzes various scams documented on the TV show "The Real Hustle" to extract seven recurring behavioral patterns exploited by scammers: 1) distraction, 2) social compliance, 3) herd mentality, 4) escalating dishonesty, 5) deception, 6) exploiting needs and greed, and 7) using time pressure. These principles are organized in a table showing their relative importance across different scam types. The work aims to help security engineers better understand "human factors" vulnerabilities rather than blame users, leading to more resilient security systems.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    43 views3 pages

    Understanding The Psychology of Scam Victims

    Uploaded by

    Richard
    Understanding the psychology of scam victims The document summarizes a study examining the psychology of scam victims in order to improve systems security. It analyzes various scams documented on the TV show "The Real Hustle" to extract seven recurring behavioral patterns exploited by scammers: 1) distraction, 2) social compliance, 3) herd mentality, 4) escalating dishonesty, 5) deception, 6) exploiting needs and greed, and 7) using time pressure. These principles are organized in a table showing their relative importance across different scam types. The work aims to help security engineers better understand "human factors" vulnerabilities rather than blame users, leading to more resilient security systems.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Understanding the psychology of scam victims

    Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson (wearing suits... up to something?)

    The paper
    I have a particular interest in the human aspects of systems security. With Paul Wilson, co-author
    and co-presenter of the BBC TV show The Real Hustle, in this study we help you understand the
    psychology of scam victims in order to improve systems security.

    Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson. "Understanding scam


    victims: seven principles for systems security". University
    of Cambridge technical report UCAM-CL-TR-754, August
    2009.
    (click paper title to download full text)

    Abstract
    The success of many attacks on computer systems can be
    traced back to the security engineers not understanding the
    psychology of the system users they meant to protect. We
    examine a variety of scams and “short cons” that were
    investigated, documented and recreated for the BBC TV
    programme The Real Hustle and we extract from them
    some general principles about the recurring behavioural
    patterns of victims that hustlers have learnt to exploit.
    We argue that an understanding of these inherent “human
    factors” vulnerabilities, and the necessity to take them into
    account during design rather than naïvely shifting the
    blame onto the “gullible users”, is a fundamental paradigm
    shift for the security engineer which, if adopted, will lead to
    stronger and more resilient systems security.

    This work is featured as an invited talk at Usenix Security 2010 and an abridged version of the
    report has been accepted for publication in Communications of the ACM.

    The principles
    1. Distraction principle. While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers
    can do anything to you and you won't notice.
    2. Social Compliance principle. Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers
    exploit this “suspension of suspiciousness” to make you do what they want.
    3. Herd principle. Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to
    them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they're all conspiring
    against you.
    4. Dishonesty principle. Your larceny is what hooks you initially. Thereafter, anything
    illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster.
    5. Deception principle. Things and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to
    manipulate you to make you believe that they are.
    6. Need and Greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers
    know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you.
    7. Time principle. When you are under time pressure to make an important choice, you use
    a different decision strategy. Hustlers steer you towards one involving less reasoning.

    Here is a summary of how the principles (columns) are used in the scams (rows) described in
    the full paper. A full dot means the principle is of major importance for that scam, while a
    hollow dot means it's used but less important.
    In a follow-up work, of which we presented a preliminary version at Security and Human
    Behaviour 2010, we revise this taxonomy based on a comparison with the related ones compiled
    by Cialdini in Influence: science and practice and by Lea et al in their OFT report on the
    psychology of scams.

    You might also like