User Behavior Under Phishing Attacks: Eye tracking, Scenarios and Analysis

In our increasingly digital world, phishing attacks pose a persistent threat that requires enhanced cybersecurity measures. Social engineering attacks in the form of Phishing emails pose various risks and challenges to an enormous number of users around the world. In such attacks, attackers use various strategies, such as visual manipulations and cognitive vulnerabilities, to significantly increase the number of victims. This paper introduces an approach that addresses the urgent need for better cybersecurity measures against persistent phishing threats, highlighting a gap in our understanding of how users cognitively and behaviorally respond to phishing emails. For this purpose, by analyzing users' visual and cognitive reactions to possible phishing content through two separate scenarios, this study aims to clarify changes in behavior caused by malicious emails and the criteria to determine their legitimacy. Our results highlight the differences in decision criteria among users when encountering phishing emails.