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Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review

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Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks. / Abdrabou, Yasmeen; Dietz, Felix; Shams, Ahmed et al.
In: arXiv, Vol. abs/2305.17044, 26.05.2023.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review

Harvard

Abdrabou, Y, Dietz, F, Shams, A, Knierim, P, Abdelrahman, Y, Pfeuffer, K, Hassib, M & Alt, F 2023, 'Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks', arXiv, vol. abs/2305.17044. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044

APA

Abdrabou, Y., Dietz, F., Shams, A., Knierim, P., Abdelrahman, Y., Pfeuffer, K., Hassib, M., & Alt, F. (in press). Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks. arXiv, abs/2305.17044. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044

Vancouver

Abdrabou Y, Dietz F, Shams A, Knierim P, Abdelrahman Y, Pfeuffer K et al. Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks. arXiv. 2023 May 26;abs/2305.17044. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044

Author

Abdrabou, Yasmeen ; Dietz, Felix ; Shams, Ahmed et al. / Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails : An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks. In: arXiv. 2023 ; Vol. abs/2305.17044.

Bibtex

@article{a83d75bc401749cab5490fb6b7bf88a3,
title = "Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails: An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks",
abstract = "Users are the last line of defense as phishing emails pass filter mechanisms. At the same time, phishing emails are designed so that they are challenging to identify by users. To this end, attackers employ techniques, such as eliciting stress, targeting helpfulness, or exercising authority, due to which users often miss being manipulated out of malicious intent. This work builds on the assumption that manipulation techniques, even if going unnoticed by users, still lead to changes in their behavior. In this work, we present the outcomes of an online study in which we collected gaze and mouse movement data during an email sorting task. Our findings show that phishing emails lead to significant differences across behavioral features but depend on the nature of the email. We discuss how our findings can be leveraged to build security mechanisms protecting users and companies from phishing.",
author = "Yasmeen Abdrabou and Felix Dietz and Ahmed Shams and Pascal Knierim and Yomna Abdelrahman and Ken Pfeuffer and Mariam Hassib and Florian Alt",
year = "2023",
month = may,
day = "26",
doi = "10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044",
language = "English",
volume = "abs/2305.17044",
journal = "arXiv",
issn = "2331-8422",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Revealing the Hidden Effects of Phishing Emails

T2 - An Analysis of Eye and Mouse Movements in Email Sorting Tasks

AU - Abdrabou, Yasmeen

AU - Dietz, Felix

AU - Shams, Ahmed

AU - Knierim, Pascal

AU - Abdelrahman, Yomna

AU - Pfeuffer, Ken

AU - Hassib, Mariam

AU - Alt, Florian

PY - 2023/5/26

Y1 - 2023/5/26

N2 - Users are the last line of defense as phishing emails pass filter mechanisms. At the same time, phishing emails are designed so that they are challenging to identify by users. To this end, attackers employ techniques, such as eliciting stress, targeting helpfulness, or exercising authority, due to which users often miss being manipulated out of malicious intent. This work builds on the assumption that manipulation techniques, even if going unnoticed by users, still lead to changes in their behavior. In this work, we present the outcomes of an online study in which we collected gaze and mouse movement data during an email sorting task. Our findings show that phishing emails lead to significant differences across behavioral features but depend on the nature of the email. We discuss how our findings can be leveraged to build security mechanisms protecting users and companies from phishing.

AB - Users are the last line of defense as phishing emails pass filter mechanisms. At the same time, phishing emails are designed so that they are challenging to identify by users. To this end, attackers employ techniques, such as eliciting stress, targeting helpfulness, or exercising authority, due to which users often miss being manipulated out of malicious intent. This work builds on the assumption that manipulation techniques, even if going unnoticed by users, still lead to changes in their behavior. In this work, we present the outcomes of an online study in which we collected gaze and mouse movement data during an email sorting task. Our findings show that phishing emails lead to significant differences across behavioral features but depend on the nature of the email. We discuss how our findings can be leveraged to build security mechanisms protecting users and companies from phishing.

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2305.17044

M3 - Journal article

VL - abs/2305.17044

JO - arXiv

JF - arXiv

SN - 2331-8422

ER -