EyeBit: Eye-Tracking Approach for Enforcing Phishing Prevention Habits

This paper proposes a cognitive method with the goal to get end users into the habit of checking the address bar of the web browser. Earlier surveys of end user behavior emphasized that users become victims to phishing due to the lack of knowledge about the structure of URLs, domain names, and security information. Therefore, there exist many approaches to improve the knowledge of end users. However, the knowledge gained will not be applied unless end users are aware of the importance and develop a habit to check the browser's address bar for the URL structure and relevant security information. We assume that the habit of checking the bar will improve educational effect, user awareness of secure information, and detection accuracy even in the case of sophisticated phishing attacks. To assess this assumption, this paper conducts a participant-based experiment where 23 participants' eye movement records are analyzed, and observes that novices do not tend to have the said habit. We then consider a way for them to acquire these habits, and develop a system which requires them to look at the address bar before entering some information into web input forms. Our prototype named EyeBit is developed as a browser extension, which interacts with an eye-tracking device to check if the user looks at the browser's address bar. The system deactivates all input forms of the websites, and reactivates them only if the user has looked at the bar. This paper shows the preliminary results of our participant-based experiments, and discusses the effectiveness of our proposal, while considering the potential inconvenience caused by EyeBit.