Defending Against Phishing Attacks

Valuable information, such as user authentication credentials and personal sensitive information, can be obtained by exploiting vulnerabilities
within the user’s understanding of a system, and particularly a lack of
understanding of the user interface.
As the barrier to exploiting system vulnerabilities has increased significantly with time, attacking users has rapidly become a more efficient and
effective alternative.
To protect users from phishing attacks system designers and security
professionals need to understand how users interact with those attacks.
In this thesis I present an improved understanding of the interaction and
three novel mechanisms to defend against phishing attacks.