Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting

Leon Kersten; Pavlo Burda; Luca Allodi; Nicola Zannone

doi:10.1109/EuroSPW55150.2022.00018

Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

51 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Phishing emails are becoming more and more sophisticated, making current detection techniques ineffective. The reporting of phishing emails from users is, thus, crucial for organizations to detect phishing attacks and mitigate their effect. Despite extensive research on how the believability of a phishing email affects detection rates, there is little to no research about the relationship between the believability of a phishing email and the associated reporting rate. In this work, we present a controlled experiment with 446 subjects to evaluate how the reporting rate of a phishing email is linked to its believability and detection rate. Our results show that the reporting rate decreases as the believability of the email increases and that around half of the subjects who detect the mail as phishing, have an intention to report the email. However, the group intending to report an email is not a subset of the group detecting the mail as phishing, suggesting that reporting is still a concept misunderstood by many.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages	117-128
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-6654-9560-8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW55150.2022.00018
Publication status	Published - 27 Jun 2022
Event	7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022 - Genoa, Italy Duration: 6 Jun 2022 → 10 Jun 2022

Conference

Conference	7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022
Country/Territory	Italy
City	Genoa
Period	6/06/22 → 10/06/22

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgment. This work is supported by the ITEA3 programme through the DEFRAUDIfy project funded by Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (grant no. ITEA191010). As part of the open-report model followed by the Workshop on Attackers & CyberCrime Operations (WACCO), all the reviews for this paper are publicly available at https://github.com/wacco-workshop/ WACCO/tree/main/WACCO-2022.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.

Funding

Acknowledgment. This work is supported by the ITEA3 programme through the DEFRAUDIfy project funded by Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (grant no. ITEA191010). As part of the open-report model followed by the Workshop on Attackers & CyberCrime Operations (WACCO), all the reviews for this paper are publicly available at https://github.com/wacco-workshop/ WACCO/tree/main/WACCO-2022.

Keywords

controlled experiment
phishing
reporting

Access to Document

10.1109/EuroSPW55150.2022.00018

pdfFinal published version, 699 KBLicence: TAVERNE

Cite this

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title = "Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting",

abstract = "Phishing emails are becoming more and more sophisticated, making current detection techniques ineffective. The reporting of phishing emails from users is, thus, crucial for organizations to detect phishing attacks and mitigate their effect. Despite extensive research on how the believability of a phishing email affects detection rates, there is little to no research about the relationship between the believability of a phishing email and the associated reporting rate. In this work, we present a controlled experiment with 446 subjects to evaluate how the reporting rate of a phishing email is linked to its believability and detection rate. Our results show that the reporting rate decreases as the believability of the email increases and that around half of the subjects who detect the mail as phishing, have an intention to report the email. However, the group intending to report an email is not a subset of the group detecting the mail as phishing, suggesting that reporting is still a concept misunderstood by many.",

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author = "Leon Kersten and Pavlo Burda and Luca Allodi and Nicola Zannone",

note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgment. This work is supported by the ITEA3 programme through the DEFRAUDIfy project funded by Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (grant no. ITEA191010). As part of the open-report model followed by the Workshop on Attackers \& CyberCrime Operations (WACCO), all the reviews for this paper are publicly available at https://github.com/wacco-workshop/ WACCO/tree/main/WACCO-2022. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 IEEE.; 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022 ; Conference date: 06-06-2022 Through 10-06-2022",

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Kersten, L, Burda, P, Allodi, L & Zannone, N 2022, Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting. in 2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022., 9799304, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, pp. 117-128, 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022, Genoa, Italy, 6/06/22. https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW55150.2022.00018

Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting. / Kersten, Leon; Burda, Pavlo; Allodi, Luca et al.
2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2022. p. 117-128 9799304.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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AU - Kersten, Leon

AU - Burda, Pavlo

AU - Allodi, Luca

AU - Zannone, Nicola

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgment. This work is supported by the ITEA3 programme through the DEFRAUDIfy project funded by Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (grant no. ITEA191010). As part of the open-report model followed by the Workshop on Attackers & CyberCrime Operations (WACCO), all the reviews for this paper are publicly available at https://github.com/wacco-workshop/ WACCO/tree/main/WACCO-2022. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 IEEE.

PY - 2022/6/27

Y1 - 2022/6/27

N2 - Phishing emails are becoming more and more sophisticated, making current detection techniques ineffective. The reporting of phishing emails from users is, thus, crucial for organizations to detect phishing attacks and mitigate their effect. Despite extensive research on how the believability of a phishing email affects detection rates, there is little to no research about the relationship between the believability of a phishing email and the associated reporting rate. In this work, we present a controlled experiment with 446 subjects to evaluate how the reporting rate of a phishing email is linked to its believability and detection rate. Our results show that the reporting rate decreases as the believability of the email increases and that around half of the subjects who detect the mail as phishing, have an intention to report the email. However, the group intending to report an email is not a subset of the group detecting the mail as phishing, suggesting that reporting is still a concept misunderstood by many.

AB - Phishing emails are becoming more and more sophisticated, making current detection techniques ineffective. The reporting of phishing emails from users is, thus, crucial for organizations to detect phishing attacks and mitigate their effect. Despite extensive research on how the believability of a phishing email affects detection rates, there is little to no research about the relationship between the believability of a phishing email and the associated reporting rate. In this work, we present a controlled experiment with 446 subjects to evaluate how the reporting rate of a phishing email is linked to its believability and detection rate. Our results show that the reporting rate decreases as the believability of the email increases and that around half of the subjects who detect the mail as phishing, have an intention to report the email. However, the group intending to report an email is not a subset of the group detecting the mail as phishing, suggesting that reporting is still a concept misunderstood by many.

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BT - 2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022

PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

T2 - 7th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, Euro S and PW 2022

Y2 - 6 June 2022 through 10 June 2022

ER -

Investigating the Effect of Phishing Believability on Phishing Reporting

Abstract

Conference

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

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