Entries Tagged "psychology of security"

Page 9 of 26

Lost Smart Phones and Human Nature

Symantec deliberately “lost” a bunch of smart phones with tracking software on them, just to see what would happen:

Some 43 percent of finders clicked on an app labeled “online banking.” And 53 percent clicked on a filed named “HR salaries.” A file named “saved passwords” was opened by 57 percent of finders. Social networking tools and personal e-mail were checked by 60 percent. And a folder labeled “private photos” tempted 72 percent.

Collectively, 89 percent of finders clicked on something they probably shouldn’t have.

Meanwhile, only 50 percent of finders offered to return the gadgets, even though the owner’s name was listed clearly within the contacts file.

[…]

Some might consider the 50 percent return rate a victory for humanity, but that wasn’t really the point of Symantec’s project. The firm wanted to see if—even among what seem to be honest people—the urge to peek into someone’s personal data was just too strong to resist. It was.

EDITED TO ADD (4/13): Original study.

Posted on April 4, 2012 at 6:07 AM • View Comments

Self-Domestication in Bonobos and Other Animals

Self-domestication happens when the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs:

But why and how could natural selection tame the bonobo? One possible narrative begins about 2.5 million years ago, when the last common ancestor of bonobos and chimpanzees lived both north and south of the Zaire River, as did gorillas, their ecological rivals. A massive drought drove gorillas from the south, and they never returned. That last common ancestor suddenly had the southern jungles to themselves.

As a result, competition for resources wouldn’t be as fierce as before. Aggression, such a costly habit, wouldn’t have been so necessary. And whereas a resource-limited environment likely made female alliances rare, as they are in modern chimpanzees, reduced competition would have allowed females to become friends. No longer would males intimidate them and force them into sex. Once reproduction was no longer traumatic, they could afford to be fertile more often, which in turn reduced competition between males.

“If females don’t let you beat them up, why should a male bonobo try to be dominant over all the other males?” said Hare. “In male chimps, it’s very costly to be on top. Often in primate hierarchies, you don’t stay on top very long. Everyone is gunning for you. You’re getting in a lot of fights. If you don’t have to do that, it’s better for everybody.” Chimpanzees had been caught in what Hare called “this terrible cycle, and bonobos have been able to break this cycle.”

This is the sort of thing I write about in my new book. And with both bonobos and humans, there’s an obvious security problem: if almost everyone is non-aggressive, an aggressive minority can easily dominate. How does society prevent that from happening?

Posted on February 17, 2012 at 6:25 AM • View Comments

Biases in Forensic Science

Some errors in forensic science may be the result of the biases of the examiners:

Though they cannot prove it, Dr Dror and Dr Hampikian suspect the difference in contextual information given to the examiners was the cause of the different results. The original pair may have subliminally interpreted ambiguous information in a way helpful to the prosecution, even though they did not consciously realise what they were doing.

[…]

This one example does not prove the existence of a systematic problem. But it does point to a sloppy approach to science. According to Norah Rudin, a forensic-DNA consultant in Mountain View, California, forensic scientists are beginning to accept that cognitive bias exists, but there is still a lot of resistance to the idea, because examiners take the criticism personally and feel they are being accused of doing bad science. According to Dr Rudin, the attitude that cognitive bias can somehow be willed away, by education, training or good intentions, is still pervasive.

Posted on January 31, 2012 at 11:13 AM • View Comments

A Theory of Online Jihadist Sites

Very interesting:

The counterterrorism community has spent years trying to determine why so many people are engaged in online jihadi communities in such a meaningful way. After all, the life of an online administrator for a hard-line Islamist forum is not as exciting as one might expect. You don’t get paid, and you spend most of your time posting links and videos, commenting on other people’s links and videos, and then commenting on other people’s comments. So why do people like Abumubarak spend weeks and months and years of their time doing it? Explanations from scholars have ranged from the inherently compulsive and violent quality of Islam to the psychology of terrorists.

But no one seems to have noticed that the fervor of online jihadists is actually quite similar to the fervor of any other online group. The online world of Islamic extremists, like all the other worlds of the Internet, operates on a subtly psychological level that does a brilliant job at keeping people like Abumubarak clicking and posting away—and amassing all the rankings, scores, badges, and levels to prove it. Like virtually every other popular online social space, the social space of online jihadists has become “gamified,” a term used to describe game-like attributes applied to non-game activities. It turns out that what drives online jihadists is pretty much exactly what drives Internet trolls, airline ticket consumers, and World of Warcraft players: competition.

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 12:37 PM • View Comments

Feeling vs. Reality of Security in Sparrows

Sparrows have fewer surviving offspring if they feel insecure, regardless of whether they actually are insecure. Liana Y. Zanette, Aija F. White, Marek C. Allen, and Michael Clinchy, “Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year,” Science, 9 Dec 2011:

Abstract: Predator effects on prey demography have traditionally been ascribed solely to direct killing in studies of population ecology and wildlife management. Predators also affect the prey’s perception of predation risk, but this has not been thought to meaningfully affect prey demography. We isolated the effects of perceived predation risk in a free-living population of song sparrows by actively eliminating direct predation and used playbacks of predator calls and sounds to manipulate perceived risk. We found that the perception of predation risk alone reduced the number of offspring produced per year by 40%. Our results suggest that the perception of predation risk is itself powerful enough to affect wildlife population dynamics, and should thus be given greater consideration in vertebrate conservation and management.

Seems as if the sparrows could use a little security theater.

Posted on December 14, 2011 at 1:22 PM • View Comments

Walls as Security Theater

Interesting essay on walls and their effects:

Walls, then, are built not for security, but for a sense of security. The distinction is important, as those who commission them know very well. What a wall satisfies is not so much a material need as a mental one. Walls protect people not from barbarians, but from anxieties and fears, which can often be more terrible than the worst vandals. In this way, they are built not for those who live outside them, threatening as they may be, but for those who dwell within. In a certain sense, then, what is built is not a wall, but a state of mind.

The essay goes on to talk about the value of walls as security theater.

Posted on December 2, 2011 at 5:30 AM • View Comments

A Link between Altruism and Fairness

I write a lot about altruism, fairness, and cooperation in my new book (out in February!), and this sort of thing interests me a lot:

In a new study, researchers had 15-month old babies watch movies of a person distributing crackers or milk to two others, either evenly or unevenly. Babies look at things longer when they’re surprised, so measuring looking time can be used to gain insight into what babies expect to happen. In the study, the infants looked longer when the person in the video distributed the foods unevenly, suggesting surprise, and perhaps even an early perception of fairness.

But the team also say they established a link between fairness and altruism. In a second part of the experiment, the babies chose between two toys, and were then asked to share one of the toys with an experimenter. About a third of the babies were “selfish sharers”: they shared the toy they hadn’t chosen. Another third were “altruistic sharers”: they shared their chosen toy. (The rest chose not to share. They may have been inhibited by the unfamiliarity of the experimenter, or maybe they just weren’t that into sharing.)

What’s interesting about the second half of the study was that by and large it was the babies who had previously been surprised by the unfair cracker and milk distribution who tended to share the preferred toy with the experimenter (the altruistic sharers). The babies who shared the rejected toy hadn’t expressed much surprise over unequal distribution. This led the researchers to suggest that there’s a fundamental link between altruism and a sense of equity.

Both psychology and neuroscience have a lot to say about these topics, and the resulting debate reads like a subset of the “Is there such a thing as free will?” debate. I think those who believe there is no free will are misdefining the term.

What does this have to do with security? Everything. It’s not until we understand the natural human tendencies of fairness and altruism that we can really understand people who take advantage of those tendencies, and build systems to prevent them from taking advantage.

EDITED TO ADD (12/14): Related research with dogs.

Posted on November 18, 2011 at 5:50 AM • View Comments

Risk Tolerance and Culture

This is an interesting study on cultural differences in risk tolerance.

The Cultures of Risk Tolerance

Abstract: This study explores the links between culture and risk tolerance, based on surveys conducted in 23 countries. Altogether, more than 4,000 individuals participated in the surveys. Risk tolerance is associated with culture. Risk tolerance is relatively low in countries where uncertainty avoidance is relatively high and in countries which are relatively individualistic. Risk tolerance is also relatively low in countries which are relatively egalitarian and harmonious. And risk tolerance is relatively high in countries where trust is relatively high. Culture is also associated with risk tolerance indirectly, through the association between culture and income-per-capita. People in countries with relatively high income-per-capita tend to be relatively individualistic, egalitarian, and trusting. Risk tolerance is relatively high in countries with relatively low income-per-capita.

Posted on September 14, 2011 at 2:02 PM • View Comments

Human Pattern-Matching Failures in Airport Screening

I’ve written about this before: the human brain just isn’t suited to finding rare anomalies in a screening situation.

The Role of the Human Operator in Image-Based Airport Security Technologies

Abstract: Heightened international concerns relating to security and identity management have led to an increased interest in security applications, such as face recognition and baggage and passenger screening at airports. A common feature of many of these technologies is that a human operator is presented with an image and asked to decide whether the passenger or baggage corresponds to a person or item of interest. The human operator is a critical component in the performance of the system and it is of considerable interest to not only better understand the performance of human operators on such tasks, but to also design systems with a human operator in mind. This paper discusses a number of human factors issues which will have an impact on human operator performance in the operational environment, as well as highlighting the variables which must be considered when evaluating the performance of these technologies in scenario or operational trials based on Defence Science and Technology Organisation’s experience in such testing.

Posted on September 13, 2011 at 1:46 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.