FICS Research Diversity Director to Present at USENIX ENIGMA 2017

Professor Daniela Oliveira will be delivering a talk entitled Security for Vulnerable Populations – On the Interplay of Weapons of Influence and Life Domains in Predicting Older Adults Susceptibility to Spear Emails at this year’s USENIX ENIGMA Conference in Oakland, California on January 31, 2017.

Abstract: Spear-phishing emails are used as a central component in many cyber-attacks. Successful emails employ psychological weapons of influence (e.g., scarcity), and relevant life domains (e.g., health) to deceive victims. This talk discusses older adults’ susceptibility to spear-phishing emails as a function of weapon of influence and life domain. A 21-day study was conducted with 83 participants (young and older adults) with data collection at the participants’ homes. Our results show that older users, especially older women, were more susceptible to phishing than younger users. While younger users were susceptible to a few weapons of influence and life domains, older users were susceptible to a variety of them. Further, there was a discrepancy, particularly among older users, between self-reported susceptibility awareness and actual susceptibility. Our results could lead to a well-grounded next generation of phishing defense solutions and training, which would take into account user age, weapons of influence, and life domains, to be effective.

USENIX , also known as The Advanced Computing Systems Association, has been organizing ENIGMA , a new conference on emerging digital security and privacy threats and novel attacks ” in the growing intersection of society and technology” since 2016. Its goal is “to foster an intelligent and informed conversation with the community and with the world, including a wide variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences”.  – USENIX ENIGMA 2017

Full 2017 Program