Paper Information

While human users are often considered to be the weakest link in security systems, the risks associated with their typical day-to-day computing habits are not well understood. Using Symantec’s WINE platform, we conduct a detailed study of 13.7B pieces of malware over a population of 1.6 million machines during an 8-month period in order to learn the relationship between user behavior and cyber-attacks against their personal computers. We classify users into four categories (gamers, professionals, software developers, others plus a fifth category comprising everyone) and identify a total of seven independent variables to study: (i) number of binaries (executables) on a machine, (ii) fraction of low-prevalence binaries on a machine, (iii) fraction of high-prevalence binaries on a machine, (iv) fraction of unique binaries on a machine, (v) fraction of downloaded binaries on a machine, (vi) fraction of unsigned binaries on a machine and (vii) travel history of the machine based on number of ISPs from whom the machine connected to the Internet.