Do Social Disorders Facilitate Social Engineering?

Social engineering is a well-established and well-studied threat especially against healthy computer users. Little studied, however, is the level of vulnerability to social engineering attacks against people with medical conditions. Social disorders in particular may make people more susceptible to such attacks. In this paper, as an initial line of investigation into this understudied research line, we launch a study of phishing, a prominent social engineering attack, against people suffering from autism spectrum disorder, a unique developmental disorder characterized by hampered social skills and communication.