Comment on Study concludes cybersecurity training doesn’t work
bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks agoIt’s also such a dumb metric because most of people’s jobs are to click on links elsewhere on the internet, yet when it’s in an email, it’s bad? Unless you’re running an old browser or there is a 0 day, simply opening a link isn’t going to hack your system, but further actions by the user would need to be taken to be compromised. These simulations don’t account for that.
Clicking the link hypothetically confirms to the spammer that yours is a valid and monitored email address, and that you’re a sucker suitable for more targeted phishing.
Of course, it seems like every random user will also happily type their password into any text box that asks for it, too.
Unless the email client is blocking external images, a tracking pixel in the email would be enough to see that the email was rendered, and that the address is valid. The trainings specifically instruct you to review the contents of the email and check the email headers before clicking links, so that alone would confirm to a spammer that the email is valid.
Every email client I can think of off the top of my head blocks images by default. And I don’t see how that relates to your criticism of the whole idea of anti-phishing training
furrowsofar@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
The real idiotic thing is a network where one client system compromise compromises the whole company.