Cyberpsychology and Cyber Security: Investigating the July 2020 Twitter Bitcoin Scam and Recommendin

Task

It is essential to expand upon what you have learned from the Cyberpsychology lectures by consulting and referencing academic material such as text/e-books, peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, and other research reports. The aim is for you to extend and demonstrate your knowledge towards the relevance of cyberpsychology to cyber security and related topic areas, and to provide critical analysis and evaluation regarding those concepts and related topics. Your account of the real-word example should illustrate how cyberpsychology contributes to your understanding of the scenario.

You will need to do your own research in order to produce a well-researched and evidenced repor supported with references (in BU Harvard format). The report must demonstrate your structured critical analysis and evaluation of the subject area that substantiates your understanding of the problem, and subsequent considerations and recommendations towards addressing the problem.

Social engineering continues to be a common attack type used as a foundation for many scams. Although there are technological elements to the attacks, many of the attacks rely on exploiting a human. People continue to unwittingly fall for these attacks, which consequently have a negative impact upon victims and the wider society. These types of attacks could potentially be reduced by raising awareness of the tactics and techniques used, and ways in which the scam attacks may be avoided.

One such attack that could be avoided in the future relates to a Twitter Bitcoin scam in July 2020. The perpetrators, spear- headed by Graham Ivan Clark were, however, apprehended and convicted (BBC 2021).

Based on the scenario, your first task is to investigate the July 2021 Twitter Bitcoin scam to identify elements of the attack and the consequential impacts (BBC 2021).In your next tasks, your research, critical analysis, evaluation, and findings of the scenario should be clearly structured. From the findings, you are to recommend an approach using psychological theory that could be applied towards reducing risks of this attack type (e.g. security, privacy, and safety risks) by promoting and raising awareness towards this attack type.

The psychological approach should be specifically focused towards changing attitudes and behaviours, and motivating that change within the SUBU community. Your report must clearly introduce the assignment's topic/problem area providing background to the topic, with an indication about what that actually means and why we should be concerned. You should provide a clear indication towards the structure of the rest of your report and what it aims to address. There should be a primary focus towards cyberpsychology concepts throughout and where applicable, supporting concepts and topics, e.g. security, privacy, safety.

Your investigation of the scenario should identify a timeline of events, from point of inception and the continuation of events by the attacker(s). Each step taken by the attacker(s) must be aligned with any of the social engineering frameworks and their stages of attack introduced in lectures, whilst detailing the motivations, goals, and skill level of the attacker. Then, identify psychological and technical tactics used, including the psychological aspects exploited in the  victim(s). The stages of the attack should be presented in a table, using the main body words to summarise the key aspects of the attack.

Continuing with your investigation of the scenario and timeline of events, based on your evaluation, present and detail the main risks identified in your scenario, being clear to indicate the related threats and vulnerabilities of each risk. Risk data should be presented within a table, using the main body words to summarise the risks. Your impact analysis must critically analyse and discuss any identified impacts (e.g. to data, systems, victims). This must include psychological as well as physical effects, and any wider knock-on effects to other people, businesses, the economy or nation(s).

Based on your critical analysis and evaluation, clearly summarise the main risks identified from your investigation that your approach needs to address. You are to introduce and discuss your recommended psychological theory-based approach towards how awareness could be raised [within your specified target audience] to reduce these risks. To achieve this, you must include one or more of the psychological theories and approaches introduced in lectures towards motivating behaviour change. You must provide examples of why and how each theory or approach could be used within your awareness strategy towards reducing risk and creating change. Provide a short conclusion.

This unit assesses your ability to:
1. Critically evaluate a range of theoretical approaches and methods from psychology in the context of digital technology.
2. Critically evaluate the role of human psychology in people's use of online services and secure systems.
3. Demonstrate a range of transferable skills relating to promoting responsible user behaviour.
4. Apply an understanding of theoretical approaches and methods from psychology to real systems and examples.