SOCIAL ENGINEERING STUDY: EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF CHOICE ARCHITECTURES ON TRUST AND PASSWORD PRIVACY

Abstract

Social engineering is a popular and dangerous method of attack in computer security and privacy studies. Even with the public rise of privacy education and computer security literature, there still remains a gap in the human elements of security. In this study, researchers from the University of Arizona designed an experiment to detect whether individuals would give away personally sensitive information to a stranger and whether the presentation style of the attack would influence the propensity of an individual would give that information away. More data will have to be collected in order to determine whether the presentation of choice in a social engineering attack influences the victim’s likelihood to trust and give away information.