The Decoy Effect in Cyber Threats: A Psychological Analysis of APT Lure Design

how threat actors exploit curiosity, urgency, and authority in file naming

APT groups don’t have to brute force passwords – they make you type them in.

In the ever-evolving threat landscape, social engineering or ‘Human Hacking’ remains one of the most effective ways for Advanced Persistent Threat Actors to find their way into even the most secure systems. The intersection of cyber threat intelligence and cognitive psychology is crucial for understanding why it can be so easy for people to fall for a carefully crafted lure, and why you really can never be too careful.

By digging into real-world decoy effects, phishing lures and malware campaigns, I uncover how threat actors exploit human curiosity, urgency and vulnerability to craft malicious files with the most irresistible sounding names.

● ● ●

First let’s take a look at what a ‘Decoy Effect’ really is.

Commonly used in marketing, it takes advantage of a cognitive bias where individuals change their preference between two options when presented with a third, less attractive decoy. However, it’s also a sneaky tactic hackers use to exploit human nature for their own gain. By tapping into predictable decision-making patterns, an ATP group can subtly steer behaviour and grant themselves access to what they couldn’t reach through brute force alone.

Paragraph chunk 7

Paragraph chunk 8

● ● ●

So how do hackers use the Decoy Effect to gain access to your stuff?

Paragraph chunk 11

● ● ●

Paragraph chunk 13

No zero-day exploit compares to the power of a well-named PDF...