Presentation
Team Cognition in Adversarial Cyber Operations: Effects of Collaboration on Deception Susceptibility and Exploit Behavior
DescriptionWith cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and involving organized adversarial teams, studying the effects of collaboration on attacker behavior has become a critical human factors issue. Nevertheless, most existing cybersecurity research still assumes that the decision-maker is an individual actor. This paper explores the impact of collaboration on adversarial behavior in cyber-deception environments, such as honeypots—decoys designed to entice, deceive, and analyze attackers. Utilizing the Team HackIT cybersecurity simulation game platform, 40 computer science students participated in a lab experiment conducted in a ring topology network, wherein 75% of all systems were decoy honeypots. The results revealed that teamwork significantly increased the number of attacks, with teams interacting with many more honeypots compared to individuals acting alone. On the other hand, cooperation between members did not improve attackers’ ability to distinguish real systems from decoys. Thus, collaboration appears to have facilitated more exploratory activity and confidence among participants, but it also increased susceptibility to deception and biased target selection.
Event Type
Lecture
TimeWednesday, October 21st11:40am - 12pm PDT
Location