Perceiving Human Psychological Consistency: Attack Detection Against Advanced Persistent Social Engineering

Social engineering involves manipulating a target to make it act to achieve the attacker's objectives. Currently, direct and short-term attacks are common in the mainstream. However, with the development of science and technology, there has been a shift toward extended and long-term attacks using VR and other technologies. We define advanced persistent social engineering (APSE) as social engineering in which a sophisticated intrusion is continuously made in the psychological aspect of the target so that the target voluntarily behaves as intended by the attacker. Countermeasures against APSE attacks have not been studied yet. We propose a method to detect APSE attacks by checking for inconsistencies in personality because the principles of human behavior (personality) do not change easily but change when others intrude.