PHISHGEM: a mobile game-based learning for phishing awareness
Carolyn Oreoluwa Tinubu, Olorunjube James Falana, Enoch Okikijesu Oluwumi, Adesina S. Sodiya, Sodiq Ademola Rufai
Abstract
Phishing attacks have become the most effective means of gaining unauthorized access to confidential information in the cyberspace. Unfortunately, many Internet users cannot identify phishing strategies and fall victim to these attacks. This work presents a mobile game-based learning called PHISHGEM for enhancing the awareness of phishing attacks. PHISHGEM educates users on five (5) major types of phishing techniques, namely, URL Manipulation, Email Spoofing, Website Cloning, Smishing and Social Media Attacks. The users of the game will identify phishing attacks in a wide range of real-life scenarios using a mobile application. The functionalities of the game were run on JAVA programming language, XML (Extensible Markup Language) was used to create the layout and Android studio IDE Version 4.1 was used to run the program. A user study with 100 participants was conducted to determine the effectiveness of PHISHGEM. Three (3) prominent factors such as the playability, usability and users’ learning outcome were used for the evaluation of the game. The study analysis revealed that PHISHGEM attained a 98% Awareness Level, a Perceived Ease of Use of 94% and a New Knowledge Acquired of 94%. Also, the Perceived Effectiveness of the game and Users’ Experience were given positive responses of 90% and 89%, respectively.