Abstract
When studying cybersecurity, the emphasis is generally given the personal information protection and the safeguarding of the technology on which the information is stored. Cybersecurity attacks, which can occur in multiple forms, can seriously affect the involved stakeholders mentally, and this impact aspect tends to be underestimated. With the human mind being a significant attack target, psybersecurity has begun gaining prominence as an important field of study. In this survey paper, we explore psybersecurity as an emerging interdisciplinary area within the human security domain of cybersecurity and conduct a detailed study of its causes plus effects. We discuss existing research work, which is relevant to this field of psybersecurity, and present a nifty organization of the surveyed literature, which is classified into three notable categories. With psychiatric engineering gaining prominence as a new impactful attack vector, a psybersecurity attack (PSA) primarily targets the human mind. We study the relations between cybersecurity and cyberpsychology, as well as between psychiatric engineering (PE) and social engineering (SE) from an interdisciplinary perspective. We perform a unique analysis of both PE and SE as PSA, linking them to Cialdini's six principles and their associated elements, as causes for PSA. We then show how to connect these causal components of PSA to the eight cyberpsychology dimensions through a tabular map that we have developed. We also discuss the emergence of COVID-driven PSA with a focus on the psybersecurity of online healthcare information (OHI) users, including potential ways of protecting the users of OHI from the increase of psybersecurity threats. We conclude this survey study by looking at the potential scope of future work in psybersecurity, including new research directions and open problems plus research questions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Franklin, C., Chattopadhyay, A.: Psybersecurity: a new emerging topic and research area within human security, IEEE Technol. Policy Ethics 6, 1–4 (2021). https://cmte.ieee.org/futuredirections/tech-policy-ethics/march-2021/psybersecurity-part1/
Wiederhold, B.: The role of psychology in enhancing cybersecurity, Psychology -Semantic Scholar (2014). https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Role-of-Psychology-in-Enhancing-Cybersecurity-Wiederhold/391c01487a3b0fab56f079a21e9d8dd551327bb3
Schawbel, D., Cialdini, R.: How to master the art of ‘pre-suasion’ (2016). https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2016/09/06/robert-cialdini-how-to-master-the-art-of-pre-suasion/
James, B.: The impact of the six principles of influence on cybersecurity (2017). https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-six-principles-influence-cybersecurity-james-beary-aca-
Poulin, C.: 6 psychological elements behind sophisticated cyber-attacks (2013). https://securityintelligence.com/sophisticated-cyber-attacks-6-psychological-elements/
Rosencrance, L., Bacon, M.: What are social engineering attacks? (2021). https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/social-engineering
Techopedia: What is a targeted attack? - definition from Techopedia. http://www.techopedia.com/definition/76/targeted-attack
Elgan, M.: Why humans are a growing target for cyberattacks - and what to do about it (2019). https://securityintelligence.com/articles/why-humans-are-a-growing-target-for-cyberattacks-and-what-to-do-about-it/
Jungmann, S.M., Michael, W.: Health anxiety, cyberchondria, and coping in the current COVID-19 pandemic: which factors are related to coronavirus anxiety? J. Anxiety Disord. 73 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102239. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32502806/
Suler, J.: The eight dimensions of cyberpsychology architecture: overview of a transdisciplinary model of digital environments and experiences (2016). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298615100_The_Eight_Dimensions_of_Cyberpsychology_Architecture_Overview_of_A_Transdisciplinary_Model_of_Digital_Environments_and_Experiences
Streff, J.: PsyberSecurity: where computer security meets psychology (2020). https://issuu.com/ilbankersassoc/docs/sept_oct_2020_web/s/11169723
Breda, F., Barbosa, H., Morais, T.: Social engineering and cyber security. In: INTED Proceedings (2017). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315351300_SOCIAL_ENGINEERING_AND_CYBER_SECURITY
Quiel, S.: Social engineering in the context of Cialdini's psychology of persuasion and personality traits (2013). https://tore.tuhh.de/handle/11420/1126
Gibson, D.: Social engineering principles, get certified get ahead blog (2000). https://blogs.getcertifiedgetahead.com/social-engineering-principles/
Ivaturi, K., Janczewski, L.: A taxonomy for social engineering attacks. Computer Science - Semantic Scholar (2011). https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Taxonomy-for-Social-Engineering-attacks-Ivaturi-Janczewski/fa433cf4d784c16bff7c824f304f071ce6b0da58
Hsu, C.: Liking someone affects how your brain processes the way they move (2012). https://www.medicaldaily.com/liking-someone-affects-how-your-brain-processes-way-they-move-242947
Sabater, V.: The law of psychological reciprocity (2021). https://exploringyourmind.com/the-law-of-psychological-reciprocity/
Cherry, K.: What is the scarcity principle? (2017). https://www.explorepsychology.com/scarcity-principle/
Hum, S.: Laws of attraction: 7 examples of the liking principle (2014). https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/liking-principle
Cherry, K.: Why do we feel compelled to return favors? (2022). https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-rule-of-reciprocity-2795891
Fessenden T.: The principle of commitment and behavioral consistency. Online Website Forum - World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience (2018). https://www.nngroup.com/articles/commitment-consistency-ux/
Ting, D.: Why cognitive biases and heuristics lead to an under-investment in cybersecurity (2021). https://dting01.medium.com/why-cognitive-biases-and-heuristics-lead-to-an-under-investment-in-cybersecurity-e41215253d90
Pandey, P., Mishra, S., Rai, P.: Social engineering and exploit development (2019). https://www.academia.edu/42013795/Social_Engineering_and_Exploit_Development
Nadeem, M.S.: Social engineering: quid pro quo attacks, 2022. https://blog.mailfence.com/quid-pro-quo-attacks/
Wright, R.A., Greenberg, J., Brehm, S.S., Brehm, J.W.: Motivational analyses of social behavior: building on Jack Brehm's contributions to psychology. Psychology Press (2004). https://www.amazon.com/Motivational-Analyses-Social-Behavior-Contributions/dp/0805842667
Mackey, J.: What is mirroring, and what does it mean for your marriage? (2022). https://www.brides.com/story/what-is-mirroring-and-what-does-it-mean-for-your-marriage
Noor, I.: How confirmation bias works (2020). https://www.simplypsychology.org/confirmation-bias.html
Gürel, G.: Asch and Milgram experiments: Social Psychology (2021). https://mozartcultures.com/en/asch-and-milgram-experiments-social-psychology/
Security Through Education: The Official Social Engineering Hub. Social Engineer, LLC (2022). https://www.social-engineer.org/
Janwar, I.: Methods of hacking - social engineering (2006). https://www.academia.edu/4903480/Methods_of_Hacking_Social_Engineering
Dunn, M., Dunn, M.: Cyber-security: 19: the routledge handbook of new security studies (2010). https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203859483-19/cyber-security-myriam-dunn-cavelty
McAlaney, J., Thackray, H., Taylor, J.: The social psychology of cybersecurity (2016). https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/social-psychology-cybersecurity
Pérez-Álvarez, M.: Psychology as a science of subject and comportment, beyond the mind and behaviour. Integr. Psychol. Behav. Sci. 52, 25–51 (2017). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29063995/
Cherry, K.: Cognitive psychology is the science of how we think, very well mind (2022). https://www.verywellmind.com/cognitive-psychology-4157181
Jeste , D.V.: Positive psychiatry: Its time has come, PubMed, 2015. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26132670/
Montañez, R., Golob, E., Xu, S.: Human cognition through the lens of social engineering cyberattacks. Front. Psychol (2020). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01755/full
Ohio State University. What Is Psychology? Department of Psychology. https://psychology.osu.edu/about/what-psychology
Laato, S., Islam, N., Whelan, E.: What drives unverified information sharing and cyberchondria during the COVID-19 pandemic? Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 29, 1–18 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2020.1770632
American Psychiatric Association. What Is Psychiatry? Psychiatry.org. https://psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-psychiatry
Michel, A.: Psyber security: thwarting hackers with behavioral science. APS Obs. 30(9) (2017). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/psyber-security-thwarting-hackers-with-behavioral-science
Louie, R. K.: #Psybersecurity: the mental health attack surface. In: 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (2020). http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2020/program-shorttalks.html
Louie, R. K.: #Psybersecurity: mental health impacts of cyberattacks. In: RSA Conference, San Francisco, California. (2020). https://www.rsaconference.com/library#q=psybersecurity-mental-health-impact-of-cyberattacks
Louie, R. K.: #Psybersecurity clinic (2020). https://psybersecurity.clinic/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Chattopadhyay, A., Beyene, N. (2023). A Survey Study of Psybersecurity: An Emerging Topic and Research Area. In: Arai, K. (eds) Advances in Information and Communication. FICC 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 652. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28073-3_59
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28073-3_59
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-28072-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-28073-3
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)