‘It's Not Paranoia If They're Really After You’: When Announcing Deception Technology Can Change Attacker Decisions

Date

2025-01-07

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Volume

Number/Issue

Starting Page

1082

Ending Page

Alternative Title

Abstract

As organisations continue to adopt deception technology, adversaries are becoming aware of this technology. Little is known, however, about how this awareness changes the attacker’s behaviour as they navigate a victim's network. Concurrently, work is being done to build algorithms that predict attacker paths to recommend where to place deceptive assets, but it is not clear whether attacker awareness of deception alters their behaviour sufficiently to render these algorithms ineffective. We present an ongoing mixed method study to better understand how attackers move through a network when they are aware of the presence of deception. Thematic analysis of think-aloud sessions revealed three key decision-making themes. Themes suggest that several industry heuristics for the use of decoys may be inaccurate and impact the efficacy of decoy placement strategies. In addition, effect sizes indicate that awareness of deception leads attackers to take longer paths through the network, although no more decoys were required to detect them.

Description

Keywords

Cyber Deception and Cyberpsychology for Defense, active defence, cyber deception, honeypots, mixed-methods research

Citation

Extent

10

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Proceedings of the 58th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.