Common Cognitive Biases Exploited by Hackers

Let’s take a closer look at some ways our brains can trick us when it comes to staying safe online. These are called cognitive biases, and they can lead to bad decisions if we’re not careful. In cybersecurity, hackers take advantage of these habits to break into systems or trick people.

1. Affect Heuristic Bias Making choices based on feelings instead of facts. For example, clicking a nice-looking email that turns out to be harmful. Training can help stop this.

2. Aggregate Bias Believing something is true just because the group agrees. This can cause teams to miss serious risks if everyone’s making the same mistake.

3. Anchoring Bias Putting too much weight on the first thing learned. This can keep someone from noticing new or changing threats.

4. Authority Bias Trusting someone just because they seem like a boss. Hackers use fake emails or voices to pretend to be important people and trick employees.

5. Availability Heuristic Bias Making decisions based only on what comes to mind quickly. Hackers use common tricks that people expect to make their attacks more convincing.

6. Bounded Rationality People can't think through everything in complex situations. Too much info can confuse people and lead to bad choices in cybersecurity.

7. Choice Overload When there are too many options, people might freeze or choose the easiest one—even if it’s not secure.

8. Confirmation Bias Believing only the information that matches what someone already thinks, and ignoring the rest. This can cause people to overlook new risks.

9. Curiosity Effect Hackers use people’s curiosity to get them to click on links or open attachments that can cause harm.

10. Decision Fatigue After making many decisions, people get tired and stop thinking carefully. This can lead to careless clicks or risky behavior.

11. Ego Depletion When people are mentally tired, they lose self-control and may forget or ignore security steps.

12. Herd Behavior Copying what everyone else is doing without thinking for yourself. If the group has bad habits, others may follow.

13. Hyperbolic Discounting Choosing what feels good now instead of thinking about the future. This can lead to skipping long-term security planning.

14. Licensing Effect Thinking that doing the right thing in the past gives you a free pass to be risky now. This can lead to relaxed behavior that causes problems.

15. Loss Aversion Trying too hard to avoid losses instead of thinking about future gains. This might stop someone from trying new security tools.

16. Normalcy Bias Believing that “nothing bad will happen” just because nothing bad has happened before. This makes people unprepared for real threats.

17. Optimism Bias Thinking bad things won’t happen to you. This can make people careless about following good security practices.

18. Overconfidence Bias Believing you’re better at cybersecurity than you really are. This can lead to ignoring warning signs or not following rules.

19. Recency Effect Focusing only on recent events and forgetting older, important lessons. Hackers may attack during big news events to catch people off guard.

20. The Ostrich Effect Ignoring problems and hoping they’ll go away. In cybersecurity, ignoring threats makes them worse.

Credits to Center For Brain Health, KnowBe4, and The Security Company International for information used in this article.