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It's Mind Games for Cyber Criminals!
Techtree News Staff, Jul 04, 2007 1303 hrs ISTAptly titled 'Mind Games', the study conducted by Dr James Blascovich, professor of Psychology at the University of California, delves into criminal minds...
McAfee has revealed results of a groundbreaking study -- that cyber criminals actually resort to psychological/mind games in propagating their numerous scams.
Aptly titled, 'Mind Games', the study, conducted by Dr James Blascovich, professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, delves into the minds of cyber criminals -- how they abuse common emotions like fear, lust, and greed to methodically steal personal and proprietary financial information.
McAfee has also commissioned a similar study in association with forensic psychologist, Professor Clive Hollin of the University of Leicester, UK.
In 'Mind Games', Dr Blascovich says, "Scam spam works best by providing recipients with a sense of familiarity and legitimacy, either by creating the illusion that the email is from a friend or colleague, or providing plausible warnings from a respected institution."
"Once the victim opens the email, criminals use two basic motivational processes, approach and avoidance, or a combination of the two, to persuade victims to click on dangerous links, provide personal information, or download risky files."
One usual staple used by cyber criminals is familiarity. For example, phishing scams extract sensitive information by more-often-than-not posing as a familiar entity -- be it a bank, a credit card company, or an online auction site.
Another such staple is popularity. There are many more instances of familiar Web sites being targeted than there are of not-so-popular-ones being attacked.
Yet another commonly exploited emotion is fear. For example messages with subject lines like, 'Urgent Security Notification', 'Your billing account records are out of date', and so on.
Then there are messages like 'You Won' or 'Your are Approved' for people who have a high sense of ambition running through them. And of course, 'why spend another week lonely?' for that most abused stereotypical category of the 'lonely single male/female'.
Those who are curious about the kind of mind games these criminals are capable of, visit: http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/white_paper.html
Aptly titled, 'Mind Games', the study, conducted by Dr James Blascovich, professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, delves into the minds of cyber criminals -- how they abuse common emotions like fear, lust, and greed to methodically steal personal and proprietary financial information.
McAfee has also commissioned a similar study in association with forensic psychologist, Professor Clive Hollin of the University of Leicester, UK.
In 'Mind Games', Dr Blascovich says, "Scam spam works best by providing recipients with a sense of familiarity and legitimacy, either by creating the illusion that the email is from a friend or colleague, or providing plausible warnings from a respected institution."
"Once the victim opens the email, criminals use two basic motivational processes, approach and avoidance, or a combination of the two, to persuade victims to click on dangerous links, provide personal information, or download risky files."
One usual staple used by cyber criminals is familiarity. For example, phishing scams extract sensitive information by more-often-than-not posing as a familiar entity -- be it a bank, a credit card company, or an online auction site.
Another such staple is popularity. There are many more instances of familiar Web sites being targeted than there are of not-so-popular-ones being attacked.
Yet another commonly exploited emotion is fear. For example messages with subject lines like, 'Urgent Security Notification', 'Your billing account records are out of date', and so on.
Then there are messages like 'You Won' or 'Your are Approved' for people who have a high sense of ambition running through them. And of course, 'why spend another week lonely?' for that most abused stereotypical category of the 'lonely single male/female'.
Those who are curious about the kind of mind games these criminals are capable of, visit: http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/white_paper.html
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mahesh
,mumbai, on Jul 05, 2007 08:19 PM
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Chandrakant par
,Mumbai, on Jul 05, 2007 08:24 AM
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