Education in the 'Virtual' Community: Can beating Malware Man Teach Users about Social Networking Security? |
Social Networks have become part of daily life for millions of people and by their very nature they encourage information sharing, which poses a significant security challenge. 2011 has seen numerous targeted "Spear Phishing" attacks in which the attackers have gained knowledge about victims before carrying out the attack. Social media has been utilised as the source for this information so therefore it is even more important that users are educated against the risks (Symantec, 2011).
Sercombe AA, Papadaki M
This paper looks the current threats and awareness strategies. It describes the design and evaluation of an online game to help educate users. The game has a central 'Malware Man' character and a firewall which burns him if the player answers correctly. The success of the game was then evaluated using an experiment with a group of participants who had played the game, and a control group who had not. 101 users participated in the study. The results showed that the game was successful in educating users, as the average percentage of correct answers was 77% for those who had played the game, compared to 55% for those who had not.