Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

It's Easy to Infect People With Malware If You Pay Them a Few Cents

posted by n1 on Monday June 16 2014, @10:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the will-do-anything-for-cash dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Gizmodo reports:

A team of four researchers found [PDF] that 22 to 43 percent of their test subjects would download and run an unknown executable file for payments ranging from as low as $0.01 to $1.

The researchers used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to conduct the experiment. Participants were asked to download a program onto their systems and run it for an hour. They did not know what the program actually did. As the amount offered to run the program was increased from $0.01 to $10 over five weeks, the percentage of users who ran the program grew steadily and topped out at 43 percent.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
It's Easy to Infect People With Malware If You Pay Them a Few Cents | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 28 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1) by jelizondo on Tuesday June 17 2014, @03:05AM

    by jelizondo (653) on Tuesday June 17 2014, @03:05AM (#56206) Journal

    Ahh! To be young and candid!

    The percentage of people who would run an unknown application is probably higher in the wild; just tell them they need "abc" program to see the latest video from the Kardashians (or however it is spelt.)

    Now, get off my lawn!