Cognitive Triaging of Phishing Attacks

Key finding

Measuring Cialdini-style persuasion triggers in real reported phishing let the authors predict which attacks would draw the most clicks, enabling response teams to prioritize takedowns. Consistency and scarcity triggers were associated with more clicks, reciprocity appeared counterproductive, and authority, social proof and liking showed no clear trend.

Why it matters

Links specific psychological tactics in real attacks to real victim response, and shows user reports can feed tactic-aware incident response.

Informs

• Pauses when a message pushes them to act fast context
• Questions requests that lean on authority challenges
• Discounts 'everyone else already did it' claims context

Cite

Heijden, A. v. d., & Allodi, L. (2019). Cognitive Triaging of Phishing Attacks. 28th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 19), pp. 1309-1326. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19/presentation/van-der-heijden