The Danger of Distraction: AI versus Cyber Threats in the Metaverse

As threat actors improve their attack tools and our world becomes more virtual, futuristic technologies like AI could take on the threat. This book explores the convergence of AI, cybersecurity, and the metaverse to propose a tool to protect users during extended reality immersion. Real-world applications, such as military and search-and-rescue drone operations - for such a tool help to inform a wide audience of how AI can protect both data and human users who might be susceptible to social engineering attacks due to distractive immersion. The book begins by exploring the cognitive psychology of distraction posed by immersive technologies such as AR and VR, proceeding then to provide a rudimentary Python code as a foundation for this proposed security tool tentatively called QuikKatch. QuikKatch would combine heuristic threat detection with sentiment analysis to intercept suspicious push notifications and other onscreen messages in real time.