EAGER: Investigating Elderly Computer Users' Susceptibility to Phishing

网络钓鱼是对互联网安全和隐私最严重和最具挑战性的威胁之一，它利用虚假网站窃取用户的在线身份和敏感信息。现有研究对年轻用户对网络钓鱼攻击的易感性进行了评估，但对现实环境中老年用户对网络钓鱼的易感性关注不够。随着美国和全球老年人口的持续快速增长，老年互联网用户数量也在持续增长，老年人成为网络诈骗的极具吸引力的目标。传统形式的网络钓鱼已经盛行了十多年；相比之下，网络单点登录网络钓鱼是一种更现代的策略，具有独特的特征，使其比传统的网络钓鱼更有利可图、更隐蔽、更难以检测。这个项目的目标是系统地比较年轻和年长的计算机用户对传统和新出现的网络单点登录网络钓鱼的易感性。我们建立了一个全面的计算机测试平台，在现实环境中测量网络钓鱼的易感性。我们假设老年人对这两种类型的网络钓鱼的易感性与年轻人不同，这种易感性可以通过认知能力的差异来解释，特别是执行功能和决策技能。该项目的研究结果将进一步提高我们对老年用户如何以及为什么可能成为网络钓鱼受害者的认识，并将为研究人员从技术和认知的角度进一步设计有效的机制来保护老年用户免受网络钓鱼的侵害提供坚实的基础。

One of the most severe and challenging threats to Internet security and privacy is phishing, which uses fake websites to steal users' online identities and sensitive information. Existing studies have evaluated younger users' susceptibility to phishing attacks, but have not paid sufficient attention to elderly users' susceptibility to phishing in realistic environments. As the elderly population in the United States and the world continues to grow rapidly, the elderly Internet user population also continues to grow, and seniors have become very attractive targets for online fraud. Traditional forms of phishing have been prevalent for over a decade; in contrast, web single sign-on phishing is a more modern strategy, with unique characteristics that make it more profitable, insidious, and harder to detect than traditional phishing. The goal of this project is to systematically compare younger and older computer users' susceptibility to both the traditional and the newly emergent web single sign-on phishing. We build a comprehensive computer testbed that measures phishing susceptibility in a realistic environment. We hypothesize that older adults will differ from younger adults in terms of their susceptibility to both types of phishing, and that this susceptibility can be explained by differences in cognitive abilities, specifically executive functioning and decision-making skills. The results of this project will advance our knowledge on how and why elderly users may fall victim to phishing, and will provide a solid basis for researchers to further design effective mechanisms to protect elderly users against phishing from both technical and cognitive perspectives.