It appears that the user-obvious malware would need to reach the anterior
insula to make a difference in computer security.
From Business Week -- Why Does logic often takes a backseat in making
decisons?:
The National Hockey League and its players wrangle over a salary cap. The
impasse causes the season to be canceled. Everybody loses. What went wrong?
According to the new science of neuroeconomics, the explanation might lie inside
the brains of the negotiators. Not in the prefrontal cortex, where people
rationally weigh pros and cons, but deep inside, where powerful emotions arise.
Brain scans show that when people feel they're being treated unfairly, a small
area called the anterior insula lights up, engendering the same disgust that
people get from, say, smelling a skunk. That overwhelms the deliberations of
the prefrontal cortex. With primitive brain functions so powerful, it's no
wonder that economic transactions often go awry. In some ways, modern economic
life for humans is like a monkey driving a car, says Colin F. Camerer, an
economist at California Institute of Technology.
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/05_13/b3926099_mz057.htm?chan=mz;
-gp
Quoting Bill Cheswick [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Here's a depressing survey
I found it utterly unsurprising. The bad guys almost never erase hard
drives, or
do other terribly inconvenient things to the machines they own. They simply
run in the background, mostly, and the users don't understand the issues.
My father has repeatedly asked why he should care that his computer is
totally
owned. I've told him that his CPU engine is blowing blue smoke all over the
Internet,
but that doesn't help.
An outbreak of user-obvious malware might change the equation, but I am not
suggesting
that someone run the experiment.
ches
