Modeling and Preventing Phishing Attacks

A theoretical yet practically applicable model covering a large set of phishing attacks, aimed towards developing an understanding of threats relating to phishing and how to perform economic analysis on the viability of attacks is discussed.

Abstract

A first contribution of this paper is a theoretical yet practically applicable model covering a large set of phishing attacks, aimed towards developing an understanding of threats relating to phishing. We model an attack by a phishing graph in which nodes correspond to knowledge or access rights, and (directed) edges correspond to means of obtaining information or access rights from already possessed information or access rights – whether this involves interaction with the victim or not. Edges may also be associated with probabilities, costs, or other measures of the hardness of traversing the graph. This allows us to quantify the effort of traversing a graph from some starting node (corresponding to publicly available information) to a target node that corresponds to access to a resource of the attacker's choice. We discuss how to perform economic analysis on the viability of attacks. A quantification of the economical viability of various attacks allows a pinpointing of weak links for which improved security mechanisms would improve overall system security.