TOWARDS AN AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO SIMULATING HUMANS FALLING FOR PHISHING ATTACKS

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Robles Perez, A. (2018). TOWARDS AN AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO SIMULATING HUMANS FALLING FOR PHISHING ATTACKS. Unc Charlotte Electronic Theses And Dissertations.
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Details
Author

Robles Perez, Anibal

Title

TOWARDS AN AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO SIMULATING HUMANS FALLING FOR PHISHING ATTACKS

Physical Description

1 online resource (37 pages) : PDF

Date

2018

Degree Granting Institution

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

In this project, we explore methods of implementing an autonomous agent that simulates human behaviour, in order to produce common mistakes that create vulnerabilities in enterprise networks. The objective of this research is to aid in testing the security of existing networks when vulnerabilities are created by the actions of their users. The research was be split into two stages. First, we investigated different possibilities of implementing the autonomous behaviour and which types of actions should be supported. The second stage was to create a virtual machine (VM) that can be implemented in either physical or virtual networks, and test the agent in different scenarios by running it against anti-phishing tools. The tool downloads files from a website using two different methods, and we record if, and when, the anti-phishing tools blocks those actions. This autonomous agent can help administrators test their network's protection against unwanted downloads. It can also be used to see which anti-phishing tool is better at protecting their network by trying different configurations against the agent.

Genre

masters theses

Subjects--Topics

Computer science
Information technology

Degree

M.S.

Keywords

Autonomous Agent
Autonomous Behaviour
Network Tool
Phishing Attack
Simulating Human Behaviour
Social Engineering Attack

Subject Area

Information Technology

Advisor(s)

Moyer, Thomas

Committee Members

Lipford, Heather
Wang, Weichao
Browne, Aidan

Degree Note

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2018.

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Rights Holder Information

Copyright is held by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Identifier

RoblesPerez_uncc_0694N_11944

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:839