Mind games cyber criminals play

A recent study says that cyber criminals resort to psychological tactics/mind games in disseminating their various scams.

The study, titled Mind Games, conducted by Dr James Blascovich, professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the United States, delves into the minds of cyber criminals.

Dr Blascovich studies how cyber criminals abuse common emotions like fear, lust, and greed to steal methodically personal and proprietary financial
information.

The study was commissioned by McAfee, the world’s second-largest antivirus company.

McAfee has also commissioned a similar study in association with Clive Hollin, forensic psychologist and Professor of the University of Leicester, the United Kingdom.

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.”

The usual method used by cyber criminals is familiarity. For example, phishing scams extract sensitive information, often by posing as a familiar entity – such as a bank, a credit card company, or an online auction site.

 Another such staple is popularity. There are many more instances of familiar websites 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’ and ‘Your billing account
records are out of date.”

Then there are messages like ‘You Won’ or ‘Your are Approved’ – targeting people who possess a high sense of ambition.

Other familiar fake messages include ‘Why spend another week lonely?’ This falls in to the most-abused category of the ‘lonely single male/female.’

 Cyber criminals are increasingly victimising popular websites. In December 2006, they targeted MySpace and used a worm to convert legitimate links to those that lured consumers to a phishing site designed specifically to obtain personal information.

David Marcus, security research and communications manager, McAfee Avert Labs, says: “Along with the alarming increase in phishing e-mails, we are also seeing more sophisticated messages that can fool all but the most highly trained surfer. While earlier phishing e-mails often included typos, awkward language and minor graphical mistakes, newer scams appear to be more legitimate, with slicker graphics and copy that closely mirrors the language used by respected institutions.”