Phishing is a type of attack that aims at circumventing technical defences such as anti-viruses or firewalls by targeting the users directly.
Although the specific goal can vary, the attackers’ objectives can be broadly categorized as one of two possibilities:
1) trick the victims into disclosing their credentials to access sensitive information (e.g., bank account, email account) or
2) trick the victims into clicking on a link or download an attachment to deliver malware.
The phishing threat has increasingly grown over the years, and it is now one of the most damaging cyber-attacks for both businesses
and private citizens. Fighting this dangerous practice requires both technical solutions that support users as well as awareness
material to inform them of both the threat and how to protect themselves. To this end, we have created a series of measures that have
been evaluated and shown to be effective in raising awareness of the problem.
Some interesting research questions that will be or already have been (partly) answered are:
In collaboration with MotionEnsemble, we created three informative videos to enhance understanding of various facets of fraudulent messages (plausibility & attachments, links and content like time pressure), equipping everyday users with the skills to more effectively distinguish between phishing attempts and legitimate communications.
More awareness measures can be found on our webpage