RE: New Use Case for W3C WSC

The premise is that users can be trained and induced to use SBM when they
are dealing with banks. The advantage of invoking SBM rather than examining
URL's more closely is that the technology will help filter out the non-bank
rather than counting on the user being sophisticated enough to know whether
they are dealing with a bank by inspecting the url. Making urls look like
the real bank url is an art many phishers have perfected

-----Original Message-----
From: public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Serge Egelman
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 1:35 PM
To: Dan Schutzer
Cc: 'Ian Fette'; 'Bob Pinheiro'; public-wsc-wg@w3.org
Subject: Re: New Use Case for W3C WSC


Right, but Ian is talking about having to go through two sequences now:
one when a message is banking-related to invoke SBM, and another to open
the URL without SBM.  Users will not remember which mode to invoke given
the circumstances.  Additionally, if we can teach users to use SBM when
they see a potential phishing message, they're already exhibiting a
higher level of alertness at that point and can be trained to examine
URLs more closely.

serge

Dan Schutzer wrote:
> I don't know if your assumptions are correct. I use Outlook and today
> when I get embedded links in my email, I am unable to open the link
> without going through an alt control sequence or clicking on a bar in
> the email chrome. So, I am already doing something like what has been
> described, and so are I suppose most of the current Outlook users
> 
>  
> 
> Dan
> 
>  
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> *From:* public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org] *On Behalf Of *Ian Fette
> *Sent:* Friday, August 24, 2007 11:56 AM
> *To:* Bob Pinheiro
> *Cc:* public-wsc-wg@w3.org
> *Subject:* Re: New Use Case for W3C WSC
> 
>  
> 
> This is going to rapidly take me down a divergent path, but I shall
> follow said path anyways.
> 
> One of the biggest problems I have with SBM is invocation. You can't
> really expect users to invoke SBM before clicking a link in their email,
> because when they're reading their email their browser might not even be
> open (except for all the wonderful gmail users out there ;-). But
> seriously, when you click on a link in Thunderbird or Outlook or Lotus
> Notes or whatever it is that you use to read email, that email program
> just knows that it's supposed to open that link in a browser
> (sometimes... if it has no clue, it might just shellexecute the URL and
> let the OS figure out what to do with it). Either way, unless the
> default browser is set to "Browser with SBM Mode Turned On", links from
> email are going to get loaded in non-SBM mode.
> 
> So, let's now go back to your response. Let's say that the user is
> educated enough to understand that SBM should be invoked before visiting
> any banking websites. (I personally find this a troublesome assumption,
> but let's run with it). Is the user then supposed to start a web
> browser, enter SBM mode, and then cut and paste the link from their
> email? That's a usability disaster, and I doubt anyone would actually
> figure out that those steps were required. Even if a user opens a
> browser and starts SBM, clicking on a link in an email program would
> very likely just start a new browser window (probably without SBM
> enabled... and when a user is in SBM mode, do you really want links from
> external programs to be able to clobber the current window?).  In my
> mind, we're heading for a usability disaster here.
> 
> Further, in your use case below, you're assuming a strong tie-in between
> a user's MUA (email client) and their browser, which is often not the
> case. In some cases the two are strongly tied together, but in many
> cases when an email client gets a URL and the user clicks on it, it just
> throws the URL to the operating system and says "deal with it". And
> we're already well down the path of suggesting extensions to MUAs (email
> clients) to do machine learning to detect possible bank-like emails, and
> I fear this is getting way out of scope of the WG...
> 
> On 8/24/07, *Bob Pinheiro* <Bob.Pinheiro@fstc.org
> <mailto:Bob.Pinheiro@fstc.org>> wrote:
> 
> I think there may be a tie-in here with Safe Browsing Mode.  Suppose the
> user is educated enough to understand that SBM should be invoked before
> visiting any banking websites.  Then upon seeing the email, the user
> should invoke SBM before clicking on the apparent banking link.  If that
> is done, then instead of displaying the ERROR 404 message, the user
> should see whatever is displayed by SBM when the user attempts to visit
> a non-safe website. 
> 
> But if it is true that "education does not consistently produce the
> results desired", then there may be numerous times when even users who
> are aware of SBM do not actually invoke it when they should; that is,
> before visiting banking websites.  So a question worth asking might be:
> can a user's browser be made "smart" enough to sense that a website that
> the user wants to visit might possibly be a banking website?  The user
> can easily sense this because the Use Case says that the email claims to
> be from the user's bank.    If the user's computer can somehow "read"
> the email header, it might display a message saying "I sense that you
> are attempting to visit a possible banking website.  However, it is
> possible that this is a fraudulent website.  Would you like me to invoke
> Safe Browsing Mode to prevent you from visiting a fraudulent site?"  The
> user could respond, Yes or No. 
> 
> Some sort of artificial intelligence that could read and interpret email
> headers might be needed, possibly triggered by certain banking-like
> keywords or phrases in an email header.  I don't know if such exists, or
> if it does, whether it is "ready for prime time" and would produce
> reliable results.  But it might be one possible answer to the dilemma of
> needing to educate users to do certain things to protect themselves
> online. 
> 
> At 08:25 AM 8/24/2007, Mary Ellen Zurko wrote:
> 
> 
> We have two sections in wsc-usecasee that touch on education:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wsc-usecases/#learning-by-doing
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wsc-usecases/#uniformity
> 
> The first says that experience shows that while users learn, education
> does not consistently produce the results desired.
> 
> The second cites on study that shows that education does not impact
> susceptability to phishing. It's possible that Brustoloni's latest shows
> that as well:
> 
> http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2007/proceedings/p88_sheng.pdf is more
> hopeful, but shows no transfer to "realistic" behavior, in a study or in
> the wild.
> 
> I gather from the discussions with the usability evaluation folks, they
> believe they can address education.
> 
> Personally, I'm not a believer in direct education, mostly because no
> one's brought up a single data point where users were directly educated
> to do something, and did it, even when they had options that were more
> attrractive for some reason (e.g. more familiar, easier).  All the
> promising anti phishing research makes sure that the secure option is
> the most attractive (or at least comparably attractive).
> 
> On the other hand, I do believe that in circumscribed oganizations, like
> the military and large companies, a system of education, reward, and
> punishment can be (and is) set up to change user behavior. I would again
> refer to http://www.acsa-admin.org/2002/papers/7.pdf as showing an upper
> bound on how successful that can be with the option is not the most
> attractive (order of 30% of the overall population).
> 
> I would be more comfortable with an education use case if we said more
> somewhere about how we'll come to terms with it. Do the usability
> evaluation folks know how we'll do that?
> 
>           Mez
> 
> 
> 
> 
> []
> *New Use Case for W3C WSC*
> *Dan Schutzer *to: public-wsc-wg
> 
> 08/24/2007 07:52 AM
> 
> 
> Sent by:*public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org
> <mailto:public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org>*
> Cc:"'Dan Schutzer'"
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'd like to submit a new use case, shown below, that several of our
> members would like included. It looks for recommendations on how to
> educate customers who have fallen for a phishing email, and improve the
> type of response customers generally get today when they try to access a
> phishing site that has been taken down. I hope this is not too late for
> consideration.
> 
> *Use Case*
> 
> Frank regularly reads his email in the morning. This morning he receives
> an email that claims it is from his bank asking him to verify a recent
> transaction by clicking on the link embedded in the email. The link does
> not display the usual URL that he types to get to his bank's website,
> but it does have his bank's name in it. He clicks on the link and is
> directed to a phishing site. The phishing site has been shut down as a
> known fraudulent site, so when Frank clicks on the link he receives the
> generic Error 404: File Not Found page. Frank is not sure what has
occurred.
> *Destination site *
> 
> prior interaction, known organization
> *Navigation *
> 
> none
> *Intended interaction *
> 
> verification
> *Actual interaction *
> 
> Was a phishing site that has been shut down
> *Note*
> * *
> Frank is likely to fall for a similar phishing email. Is there some way
> to educate Frank this time, so that he is less likely to fail for the
> phishing email again?
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 

-- 
/*
Serge Egelman

PhD Candidate
Vice President for External Affairs, Graduate Student Assembly
Carnegie Mellon University

Legislative Concerns Chair
National Association of Graduate-Professional Students
*/

Received on Friday, 24 August 2007 18:10:58 UTC