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<p>Human-focused cybersecurity research is a growing area. The focus in this work is studying attacker thinking and reasoning. Oppositional Human Factors (OHF) posits that cognitive biases and heuristics used by attackers during their decision-making process may be exploited by defensive security teams. OHF is positively supported by a variety of experimental data. The current study experimentally tests exploiting attackers’ loss aversion. We manipulated the endowment effect in a cyber environment by giving attackers access, and then by threatening that access we were able to measure whether attacker performance was affected by this bias. A major contribution is the use of demonstrated expert participants combined with a realistic mission and a high-fidelity military cyber range. The results revealed degraded attacker performance across several measures including reduced steps taken in the kill chain, and increased time taken. Loss aversion is a relevant and provocative cyber attacker bias that can be exploited in OHF-based defenses.</p>

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Exploiting Loss Aversion Disrupts Skilled Attackers in a Realistic Cyber Range

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月20日

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  • Robert S. Gutzwiller,
  • Raghav Bhat,
  • Sean Guarino,
  • Benjamin Clegg,
  • Spencer K. Lynn,
  • Virginia Kwan,
  • Joel Hypolite,
  • Michael Sieffert,
  • Michael Locasto,
  • David Kelle,
  • Max Slocum,
  • Curt Wu,
  • Scott Harrison,
  • Matthew Revelle,
  • Susan Latiff

摘要

Human-focused cybersecurity research is a growing area. The focus in this work is studying attacker thinking and reasoning. Oppositional Human Factors (OHF) posits that cognitive biases and heuristics used by attackers during their decision-making process may be exploited by defensive security teams. OHF is positively supported by a variety of experimental data. The current study experimentally tests exploiting attackers’ loss aversion. We manipulated the endowment effect in a cyber environment by giving attackers access, and then by threatening that access we were able to measure whether attacker performance was affected by this bias. A major contribution is the use of demonstrated expert participants combined with a realistic mission and a high-fidelity military cyber range. The results revealed degraded attacker performance across several measures including reduced steps taken in the kill chain, and increased time taken. Loss aversion is a relevant and provocative cyber attacker bias that can be exploited in OHF-based defenses.