Cybersecurity Quarterly
Virtual Reality: A New Frontier of Social Engineering Social engineering has become one of the most successful tools for hackers; what happens when this strategy enters a world where everything is already not what it seems? By Kavya Pearlman We are crossing a new frontier with virtual reality. Virtual reality (VR) combines technology and human psychology to deliver a depth of convincing experiences anywhere, anytime. We are looking at a whole new dimension created via head-mounted displays and hand controllers to provide fully immersive experiences. While the technology brings to life amazing art and entertainment, such as the “Ready Player One” movie, there is a darker side to the technology that multiplies the threat of social engineering multifold. Social engineering is the act of taking advantage of human behavior — a human mistake — to steal confidential information. This tactic works because it’s easier for hackers to exploit the natural inclination to trust someone than to figure out a new way to access a system.
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Social engineering is the act of taking advantage of human behavior — a human mistake — to steal confidential information. Imagine the sophistication of this strategy when technology itself can convince the human brain that it's somewhere it's really not. virtual universes up to now, such as Second Life by Linden Lab, only existed in three dimensions (3D) and were experienced via a computer screen. For better or for worse, this is changing faster than imagined.
Imagine the sophistication of this strategy when technology itself can convince the human brain that it is somewhere it is really not. This only gets worse when we combine the social aspects, as multiple individuals can now interact and share experiences via use of virtual reality. This is good for a social engineer, but bad for innocent users who have the potential to get tricked by a person with ill intent.
Global revenues from virtual reality technologies will reach $7.17 billion by the end of this year, according to a new report by Greenlight Insights (Greenlight Insights is the global leader in virtual and augmented reality market intelligence), which also predict that global VR revenues will total close to $75 billion by 2021¹ (see Figure 1 on next page).
Virtual Reality is Here to Stay
Social Engineering
Virtual worlds are not new, and neither are threats from social engineering. However, most of the
Like with many technologies, the weakest link in ¹ http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/virtual-reality-industryrevenue-2017-1202027920