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posted by on Saturday February 04 2017, @02:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the darned-monkey-brain dept.

Companies spend nearly $100 billion on securing computers each year, yet incidents such as ransomware crippling hospitals and personal data leaking online remain common. Anthony Vance thinks that defensive measures could be more effective if we paid more attention to the hardware between our ears.

"Security professionals need to worry not only about attackers but the neurobiology of their users," said Vance, an associate professor at Brigham Young University, this week at the Enigma security conference in Oakland, California. His lab uses functional MRI scans of people's brains to reveal the unconscious mechanisms behind the way they perceive—or ignore—security warnings.

One of Vance's studies led him to collaborate with Google on tests of a new approach to displaying security warnings in the Chrome Web browser that people were less likely to dismiss offhand. Vance says Google's engineers told him they plan to add the feature to an upcoming version of Chrome. Google did not respond to a request for confirmation of when it would be added.

Multitasking is partly to blame. Vance's collaboration with Google grew out of experiments that showed when people reacted to security warnings while also performing another task, brain activity in areas associated with fully engaging with a warning was significantly reduced. People were three times less likely to correctly interpret a message when they reacted to security warnings while also performing another task.

Vance's lab teamed up with Google to test a version of Chrome modified to deliver warnings about a person's computer possibly being infected by malware or adware only when they weren't deeply engaged in something. For example, it would wait until someone finished watching a video, or was waiting for a file to download or upload, to pop up the message.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday February 05 2017, @09:47AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Sunday February 05 2017, @09:47AM (#463070) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, you're right. I suppose I'm a sort of luddite when it comes to advances in user interfaces. In some ways it's an extension of the Fuck Beta attitude that I would assume many Soylentils share.

    On reflection my post was a bit of a knee jerk excuse to rant about the declining usability of computers as a technical or academic tool but it was barely applicable to the TFA. I mean, I'm all for software suppressing intrusive alerts whilst I'm watching a video though to be honest I'm not sure I want my browser to be responsible for malware detection. There are other tools for that. There's always scope for improvement in the way information is presented so this kind of research could be useful (they mention the use of changes in color to draw attention - useful but not sure this is new) if it's applied in the right way.

    The problem comes for techies when user interface "improvements" end up removing old features. If you keep an advanced mode in there so the nerd % can still do what they need to then fine. But hey, this is Google. We can just keep using Linux and compile our own open source tools if the latest "improvements" aren't to our tastes (or even if they are - you wouldn't catch me with a Chromebook or iPad).

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
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