Social, behavioral and economic science

group_project

Visible to the public TWC: Large: Collaborative: Living in the Internet of Things

More and more objects used in daily life have Internet connectivity, creating an "Internet of Things" (IoT). Computer security and privacy for an IoT ecosystem are fundamentally important because security breaches can cause real and significant harm to people, their homes, and their community.

group_project

Visible to the public TWC SBES: Small: Anonymity in Cyberspace

Internet users may have compelling reasons to seek anonymity online, for example, to discuss stigmatizing issues with others like themselves, or to express dissident opinions. This project studies what people believe it means to be anonymous online, how their privacy and security are affected by their strategies to achieve anonymity, and how they are likely to use new anonymity services. These questions are important because the traceability of users? actions across sites and contexts is ever greater, increasing risks for users who may misjudge their actual anonymity.

group_project

Visible to the public TWC SBE: Medium: Collaborative: Building a Privacy-Preserving Social Networking Platform from a Technological and Sociological Perspective

Social networks provide many benefits, but also give rise to serious concerns regarding privacy. Indeed, since privacy protections are not intrinsically incorporated into the underlying technological framework, user data is still accessible to the social network and is open to misuse. While there have been efforts to incorporate privacy into social networks, existing solutions are not sufficiently lightweight, transparent, and functional, and therefore have achieved only limited adoption.

group_project

Visible to the public TWC SBE: Medium: Collaborative: Brain Hacking: Assessing Psychological and Computational Vulnerabilities in Brain-based Biometrics

In September of 2015, it was reported that hackers had stolen the fingerprint records of 5.6 million U.S. federal employees from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This was a severe security breach, and it is an even bigger problem because those fingerprints are now permanently compromised and the users cannot generate new fingerprints. This breach demonstrates two challenging facts about the current cybersecurity landscape. First, biometric credentials are vulnerable to compromise. And, second, biometrics that cannot be replaced if stolen are even more vulnerable to theft.

group_project

Visible to the public TC: Small: Collaborative Research: Influencing Mental Models of Security

Over 80 million households in the United States have a home computer and an Internet connection. The vast majority of these are overseen by people who have little computer security knowledge or training, and many users try to avoid making security decisions because they feel they don't have the knowledge and skills to maintain proper security. Nevertheless, home computer users still make security-related decisions on a regular basis --- for example, whether or not to click on a link in an email message --- without being aware that is what they are doing.

group_project

Visible to the public SBE: Small: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Cyberaggression and Self-Disclosure among Diverse Youths

Youths of the digital age live parallel lives online and in the real world, frequently disclosing personal information to cyberfriends and strangers, regardless of race, class or gender. Race and gender do make a difference, however, when these online disclosures lead to acts of cyberaggression. The PIs' previous work revealed that some youths are resistant to cyberaggression and that there are differences in perceptions of cyberbullying among youths from different cultural and racial backgrounds.

group_project

Visible to the public EAGER: An Investigation of the Propagation of Error-Resistant and Error-Prone Messages Over Large-Scale Information Networks

This project seeks to understand how inaccurate messages are propagated over large-scale information networks that are consumed by the general public, how the public responds to such inaccuracy, and what content- or metadata-related characteristics/features make certain messages more error-resistant or error-prone than others. The results of the project have the potential to help build a platform that accurately identifies errors being propagated on an information network and effectively manages/controls such error propagation.

group_project

Visible to the public CRII: SaTC: Privacy-Enhancing User Interfaces Based on Individualized Mental Models

Technology advances have brought numerous benefits to people and society, but also heightened risks to privacy. This project will investigate mechanisms and build tools to help people make privacy-aware decisions in different online contexts. The outcomes will help people to better understand their own privacy preferences and behavior, and enable them to better manage their privacy on the Internet. The project will create designs that can be integrated into mobile app markets and web browsers. The results will also inform Internet standards and governmental policies on Internet privacy.

group_project

Visible to the public EAGER: Collaborative: Computational Cognitive Modeling of User Security and Incentive Behaviors

User behavior is a critical element in the success or failure of computer security protections. The field of Human Security Informatics (HSI) combines security informatics and human-computer interaction design to learn how the design of a human-computer interface can affect the security of a computer system. This research project is contributing to the scientific foundations of HSI by modeling how multitasking users behave when making security-critical decisions.

group_project

Visible to the public EAGER: Integrating Cognitive and Computer Science to Improve Cyber Security: Selective Attention and Personality Traits for the Detection and Prevention of Risk

Increasingly, there is a need for better understanding of behavioral and cognitive factors in cyber security. This project is a novel collaboration between computer science cyber security researchers and a cognitive science researcher to generate data on the links between personality traits and cyber security. The broad theoretical premise of the proposed research is that there are particular cognitive preferences and related personality factors that can be assessed in real time, real world scenarios and these may be associated with individual user's secure/insecure cyber behavior.