Essentials Lec 8 - 14 Flashcards
In organisational cybersecurity what are External Security Threats?
- Professional cyber criminals and terrorist (hard to detect)
- Disgruntled employees - Competitors
- Hacktivists
- Script kiddies (advertise actions)
What are common security behaviours in organisations?
- Insider Threat
- Shadow Security
- Compliance budget
What is Shadow Security?
Shadow security (e.g. using own USBs, devices, transfer websites, etc.) - Getting the job done > secure behaviour (time you have and need) - Workarounds - Not always less secure
What is Compliance Budget?
Compliance budget (e.g. crossing the red light in the middle
of the night) - Enough is enough - Employees can only take so much - Limited resources, so use it wisely - Passwords: change it every 70 days, don’t share it, etc.
What is Phishing?
Fraudulent attempt to obtain key information (log in details,
bank details, social security numbers, etc.).
What are the 3 types of phishing?
Roughly there are three types of phishing:
1. Phishing
2. Spear phishing: specific attack
3. Whaling: going after CEO’s (big fish)
What are the suspectibility factors of phishing?
Message factors
- Social influence (e.g. authority, conformity, relational norms)
- Needs and wants (e.g. curiosity, reward, flattery)
- Loss
- Trust
Individual factors
- Prosperity to trust
- Goals and motivation
- Personality (Big 5), self control, impulsivity
- Knowledge, expertise, experience
Context factors
- Current state (e.g. Mood, cognitive load, current needs)
- WIder context (culture, organisational context, status)
What are common phishing techniques?
- Sense of urgency
- Invoking emotions
- Legitimacy Cues
- Social Influence Processes
- Decision Biases
What is Social Engineering?
The acquisition of sensitive information or inappropriate access privileges by
an outsider, based upon the building of an inappropriate trust relationship
with insiders. The goal of social engineering is to trick someone into providing
valuable information or access to that information. Also considered a ‘human
vulnerability’. Increasingly likely in organisations that are:
1) authoritarian, 2) hierarchical and 3) low in trust.
What are the types of social engineering?
Types of social engineering
- Phishing/ vishing
- Impersonation
- Tailgating
- Baiting
What are the 6 weapons of influence (Cialdini)
Compliance inducing techniques:
1. Authority (tendency to comply with people in positions of authority)
2. Commitment and consistency (a psychological tendency to always ensure consistency between actions and promises and their
inner values and belief systems)
3. Liking
4. Reciprocity (if you do something for me I will do something for you)
5. Scarcity (the fear of missing out)
6. Social proof (what people around you are doing, you are more likely to do that as well)
What are other social engineering techniques?
Other social engineering techniques: - Elicitation techniques (e.g. did I link my 35515 to this address?) - More reciprocation techniques - Mirroring/ mimicry (e.g. liking)
What is Reciprocation
Reciprocation
“If you do something nice for me I’ll do something nice for you. I feel obligated to reciprocate.” It is a social norm of responding to a
positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly
actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model; conversely, in
response to hostile actions they are frequently much more nasty and even brutal. Remember: charity giving you free money (disclosure
is reciprocated too)
- Opening doors (tailgating) - Influence techniques:
1. Door in the face (rejection-then-retreat: making an outrageous request that someone will almost certainly turn down, and then
make the smaller request that was the favour of interest all along).
2. Foot in the door (getting a person to agree with a large request by first getting them to agree to a moderate request).
What is Mirroring/Mimicry?
Mirroring is the behaviour in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring
often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family. The principle with mimicry is to repeatedly
perform the action and then reward any action that begins to be like what you are doing.
- Mirroring can occur using
Non verbal body language
Linguistic style
Lexical matching
Accent - Waitress who repeat back your order get bigger tips
- Liking
What are solutions in organizational security?
- Make it usable - What (are) might be the unintended consequences be? - How do my protocols interfere with employees productivity/ core tasks?
- Limit access to information - Mitnick & Motorola SW code
- External security != Internal security - Both physical access and protective measures
- Don’t just ban or monitor, but enable staff
- Accept risk, have recovery plans
- Link corporate security practices to personal security behaviour
- Work with end-users to create workable processes - e.g. how to distribute information and share files
- Create policy on how to act when job tasks and security practises do not align, - This in order to avoid individual shadow security practises.
What are the elements of a security culture?
- Security culture: more than a set of behaviours - Requirements - Physical security - Cyber security - Board buy-in - Leading by example
What is Misinformation and Disinformation difference?
Both cover falsehoods and both can be deceptive. - Misinformation = unintentional - Disinformation = intentional
What are the 7 types of mis- and disinformation?
- Satire or parody: no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool
e.g. The Onion, De Speld, Private Eye - False connection: when headlines, visuals or captions do not support the content
e.g. clickbait, - Misleading content: misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual
e.g. white people & black people portrayed after hurricane Katrina - False context: when genuine content is shared with false contextual information
e.g. “Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack” - Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated
e.g. “Doubts raised over authenticity of Charlie Hebdo footage” - Manipulated content: when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive
e.g. “President Macron vows to flood Europe with millions of African migrants” - Fabricated content: new content that is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm
e.g. Quote by Trump: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters…”
Why is fake news a problem
Is fake news a problem? - Financially motivated vs. Politically motivated news
* Confusion about current events
* Suggestions of poor ability to recognise
* Reduces trust in civic institutions - Viewing fake news may foster feelings of alienation
* Perceived realism of fake news stronger with lower exposure to genuine news
What is an Echo chamber?
Echo chamber: can be online or offline. When people with the same attitudes/ beliefs group together and block those with different
attitudes
What is an Filter Bubble
when algorithms automatically recommend content the person is likely to agree with (based on previous behaviour).
What have you looked at, what have you enjoyed, why did you spend more time on a platform?
What are the consequences of misinformation?
Consequences
- Similar to targeted advertising —> who knows?
- Undermining existing systems and structures
- Debunking is difficult
- Facts have limited reach
What are Human Vulnerabilities concerning mis/disinformation
- Truth bias: we tend to think people are telling the truth
- Naive realism: our perceptions of reality are true, others are uninformed, biased
- Confirmation bias: we seek information that confirms existing beliefs
- Dunning-Kruger effect: we think we’re most competent than we are and our ability to be aware of this reduces as we become less
able - Sleeper effect
What is the mere exposure effect?
Repeating fake news makes it more real - Mere exposure effect: liking - Illusory truth effect — pre-exposure to a statement increases the likelihood it will be judged as accurate (processing fluency) - Demonstrated with fake news as well
What is the Role of Social Media
- How does social media design support fake news?
- Do they want to stop it?
- Commercial and ethical considerations
What are the downsides of technology in fake news?
- “Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behaviour like
this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.” - By this point, we’ve already seen enough to recognise that the core business model underlying the Big Tech platforms— harvesting
attention with a massive surveillance infrastructure to allow for targeted, mostly automated advertising at very large scale—is far too
compatible with authoritarianism, propaganda, misinformation, and polarisation. (Zeynep Tufecki, 2018)
What are the technical aspects of social media in fake news?
- Ease of share
- Homogeneity and filter bubbles
- Facebook’s fake news problem
- Twitter’s bot problem
What are the problems and solutions to mis/disinformation