Understanding the Weaknesses of Human-Protocol Interaction

A significant number of attacks on systems are against the non-cryptographic components such as the human interaction with the system. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy of human-protocol interaction weaknesses. This set of weaknesses presents a harmonization of many findings from different research areas. In doing so we collate the most common human-interaction problems that can potentially result in successful attacks against protocol implementations. We then map these weaknesses onto a set of design recommendations aimed to minimize those weaknesses.