Article Review Two: The Stimulation of Human Response to Social Engineering Attacks

Introduction

The article that I am reviewing is titled Harnessing Large Language Models to Simulate
Realistic Human Responses to Social Engineering Attacks: A Case Study. The article is adapted
from the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime. In this paper, I will
discuss how the article relates to social science principles, a description of the study’s questions
or hypotheses, and additional information about the article.

Study relations to social science principles

The topic of this article relates to the criminology, psychology, and sociology
components of the principles of the social sciences. The article relates to the criminology
component due to the fact that it evaluates social engineering attacks and phishing attacks,
attacks that cybercriminals use to commit crimes. The article involves the psychology aspect of
the principles of social science because it explains how human behavior can be altered due to
cyberattacks. For example, the authors discussed how they used social engineering attacks on
large language models such as the GPT-4 device that generate human-like behavior to analyze
how humans reacted to cybercriminals attacks. The authors demonstrate the sociology aspect by
investigating human behavior involving hacking.

Description of the study’s research questions

The research question the authors analyzed was “How does the stimulated behavior of
human targets, based on the Big Five personality traits, respond to social engineering attacks?”
Asfour, M., and Murillo, J. C. (2023) The author conducted this research by implementing
several methods. The methods used were the Big Five personality traits and social engineering
attacks, especially phishing attacks. The article illustrates the methods while explaining in
specifics the components that contribute to each of the Big Five personality traits, which are
experiment design, simulation tool setup, target persona generation, attack simulation, and
response analysis. From the data collected in this article, the authors concluded that certain
personality traits can affect the vulnerability of a person to social engineering attacks (Asfour,
M., & Murillo, J. C., 2023). The authors prove the analysis of this experiment through the
various trials they completed on phishing attacks against people with different personality traits.

Conclusion of the study

The main point of this article was for the authors to analyze realistic human responses to
social engineering attacks. The experiment implemented various methods to analyze it, such as
GPT-4 innovation that mimics human behavior and the Big Five personality traits chart. To
conclude, the findings demonstrate that certain personality traits can make a person vulnerable to
cybersecurity attacks. The article also explains how society has to take into consideration the
importance of learning how to maneuver with technology based on certain personality traits. The
authors highlighted valuable components in this article about human interactions with
cyberattacks.

The research question the authors analyzed was “How does the stimulated behavior of
human targets, based on the Big Five personality traits, respond to social engineering attacks?”
Asfour, M., and Murillo, J. C. (2023) The author conducted this research by implementing
several methods. The methods used were the Big Five personality traits and social engineering
attacks, especially phishing attacks. The article illustrates the methods while explaining in
specifics the components that contribute to each of the Big Five personality traits, which are
experiment design, simulation tool setup, target persona generation, attack simulation, and
response analysis. From the data collected in this article, the authors concluded that certain
personality traits can affect the vulnerability of a person to social engineering attacks (Asfour,
M., & Murillo, J. C., 2023). The authors prove the analysis of this experiment through the
various trials they completed on phishing attacks against people with different personality traits.
Conclusion of the study
The main point of this article was for the authors to analyze realistic human responses to
social engineering attacks. The experiment implemented various methods to analyze it, such as
GPT-4 innovation that mimics human behavior and the Big Five personality traits chart. To
conclude, the findings demonstrate that certain personality traits can make a person vulnerable to
cybersecurity attacks. The article also explains how society has to take into consideration the
importance of learning how to maneuver with technology based on certain personality traits. The
authors highlighted valuable components in this article about human interactions with
cyberattacks.