Detecting Phishing Messages

Rick Wash
Associate Professor Michigan State University

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Phishing messages are communications, such as emails, where someone sends a message pretending to be something or someone they are not in order to get you to do something you normally wouldn’t be willing to do. Phishing is one of the leading methods of attack by cybercriminals and in information warfare, is commonly used to install ransomware, and was previously used to disrupt elections. Phishing is fundamentally a human problem, but it most commonly occurs when sending messages through computers. Humans and computers need to work together to detect when a message if phishing and to deal with it appropriately. I will describe how IT experts detect phishing emails, will compare that with how non-experts detect phishing, and discuss how this human work integrates with and complements the ways that computers detect phishing.