On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation

Jinxue Zhang; Rui Zhang; Yanchao Zhang; Guanhua Yan

doi:10.1109/CNS.2013.6682691

On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation

Jinxue Zhang, Rui Zhang, Yanchao Zhang, Guanhua Yan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Online social networks (OSNs) are increasingly threatened by social bots which are software-controlled OSN accounts that mimic human users with malicious intentions. A social botnet refers to a group of social bots under the control of a single botmaster, which collaborate to conduct malicious behavior, while at the same time mimicking the interactions among normal OSN users to reduce their individual risk of being detected. We demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of exploiting a social botnet for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation through real experiments on Twitter and also trace-driven simulations. Our results can help understand the potentially detrimental effects of social botnets and help OSNs improve their bot(net) detection systems.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013
Publisher	IEEE Computer Society
Pages	46-54
Number of pages	9
ISBN (Print)	9781479908950
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS.2013.6682691
State	Published - Jan 1 2013
Event	1st IEEE International Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013 - Washington, DC, United States Duration: Oct 14 2013 → Oct 16 2013

Publication series

Name	2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013

Other

Other	1st IEEE International Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013
Country	United States
City	Washington, DC
Period	10/14/13 → 10/16/13

Fingerprint

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Networks and Communications

Cite this

Zhang, J., Zhang, R., Zhang, Y., & Yan, G. (2013). On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation. In 2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013 (pp. 46-54). [6682691] (2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS.2013.6682691

On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation. / Zhang, Jinxue; Zhang, Rui; Zhang, Yanchao; Yan, Guanhua.

2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013. IEEE Computer Society, 2013. p. 46-54 6682691 (2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Zhang, J, Zhang, R, Zhang, Y & Yan, G 2013, On the impact of social botnets for spam distribution and digital-influence manipulation. in 2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013., 6682691, 2013 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 46-54, 1st IEEE International Conference on Communications and Network Security, CNS 2013, Washington, DC, United States, 10/14/13. https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS.2013.6682691

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Access to Document

10.1109/CNS.2013.6682691