Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Bailey, Michael
Department of Study
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Discipline
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
social engineering
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Abstract
In today’s computer security climate, attacks against computers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and cheaper to execute. In this thesis, we present the results of a study conducted on the University of Illinois campus to determine the effectiveness of dropping 297 “infected” USB flash drives in a public place as an attack vector. A self-report survey given to 71 individuals highlights some of the psychological processes that motivate people to plug in the flash drives. We find that this type of attack is generally effective and relatively insensitive to its precise environmental configuration. Generally, participants expressed desire to return the flash drives to their owners, although our data shows that they also explored the contents of the flash drives on occasion.
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