Characterizing the Evolution of Psychological Factors Exploited by Malicious Emails

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11584v1
• Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:48:32 GMT
• Title: Characterizing the Evolution of Psychological Factors Exploited by Malicious Emails
• Authors: Theodore Longtchi, Shouhuai Xu,
• Abstract summary: We characterize the evolution of malicious emails through the lens of Psychological Factors, PFs. We conduct a case study on 1,260 malicious emails over a span of 21 years, 2004 to 2024. Attackers have been constantly seeking to exploit many PFs, especially the ones that reflect human traits.
• Score: 7.017268913381067
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Cyber attacks, including cyber social engineering attacks, such as malicious emails, are always evolving with time. Thus, it is important to understand their evolution. In this paper we characterize the evolution of malicious emails through the lens of Psychological Factors, PFs, which are humans psychological attributes that can be exploited by malicious emails. That is, attackers who send them. For this purpose, we propose a methodology and apply it to conduct a case study on 1,260 malicious emails over a span of 21 years, 2004 to 2024. Our findings include attackers have been constantly seeking to exploit many PFs, especially the ones that reflect human traits. Attackers have been increasingly exploiting 9 PFs and mostly in an implicit or stealthy fashion. Some PFs are often exploited together. These insights shed light on how to design future defenses against malicious emails.

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