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Who is targeted by email-based phishing and malware?: Measuring factors that differentiate risk

Authors:

Camelia Simoiu,

Elie BurszteinAuthors Info & Claims

IMC '20: Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference

Pages 567 - 576

https://doi.org/10.1145/3419394.3423617

Published: 27 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

As technologies to defend against phishing and malware often impose an additional financial and usability cost on users (such as security keys), a question remains as to who should adopt these heightened protections. We measure over 1.2 billion email-based phishing and malware attacks against Gmail users to understand what factors place a person at heightened risk of attack. We find that attack campaigns are typically short-lived and at first glance indiscriminately target users on a global scale. However, by modeling the distribution of targeted users, we find that a person's demographics, location, email usage patterns, and security posture all significantly influence the likelihood of attack. Our findings represent a first step towards empirically identifying the most at-risk users.

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As technologies to defend against phishing and malware often impose an additional financial and usability cost on users (such as security keys), a question remains as to who should adopt these heightened protections. We measure over 1.2 billion email-based phishing and malware attacks against Gmail users to understand what factors place a person at heightened risk of attack. We find that attack campaigns are typically short-lived and at first glance indiscriminately target users on a global scale. However, by modeling the distribution of targeted users, we find that a person?s demographics, location, email usage patterns, and security posture all significantly influence the likelihood of attack. Our findings represent a first step towards empirically identifying the most at-risk users.

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cover image ACM Conferences

IMC '20: Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference

October 2020

751 pages

ISBN:9781450381383

DOI:10.1145/3419394

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Published: 27 October 2020

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678890.3678923
Köhler DPünter WMeinel C(2024)We have Phishing at Home: Quantitative Study on Email Phishing Susceptibility in Private ContextsInformation Security10.1007/978-3-031-75764-8_13(246-265)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-75764-8_13
Dambra SBilge LKotzias PShen YCaballero JCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)One size does not fit allProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620555(5683-5700)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3620237.3620555
Pandit SSarker KPerdisci RAhamad MYang DCalandrino JTroncoso C(2023)Combating robocalls with phone virtual assistant mediated interactionProceedings of the 32nd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3620237.3620264(463-480)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
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