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Online social networks (OSN) like Twitter or Facebook are popular and powerful since they allow reaching millions of users online. They are also a popular target for socialbot attacks. Without a deep understanding of the impact of such…
Social bots represent a new generation of bots that make use of online social networks (OSNs) as a command and control (C\&C) channel. Malicious social bots were responsible for launching large-scale spam campaigns, promoting low-cap…
As our reliance on social media platforms and web services increase day by day, exploiters view these platforms as an opportunity to manipulate our thoughts ad actions. These platforms have become an open playground for social bot accounts.…
Technological advancements have resulted in an exponential increase in the use of online social networks (OSNs) worldwide. While online social networks provide a great communication medium, they also increase the user's exposure to…
Social bots play a significant role in many online social networks (OSN) as they imitate human behavior. This fact raises difficult questions about their capabilities and potential risks. Given the recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI),…
Social Honeypots are tools deployed in Online Social Networks (OSN) to attract malevolent activities performed by spammers and bots. To this end, their content is designed to be of maximum interest to malicious users. However, by choosing…
With its lenient moderation policies and long-standing associations with potentially unlawful activities, Telegram has become an incubator for problematic content, frequently featuring conspiratorial, hyper-partisan, and fringe narratives.…
The computer science research community has became increasingly interested in the study of social media due to their pervasiveness in the everyday life of millions of individuals. Methodological questions and technical challenges abound as…
In an Online Social Network (OSN), users can create a unique public persona by crafting a user identity that may encompass profile details, content, and network-related information. As a result, a relevant task of interest is related to the…
This study examines how Russian far-right communities on Telegram shape perceptions of political figures through memes and visual narratives. Far from passive spectators, these actors co-produce propaganda, blending state-aligned messages…
Mis- and disinformation, commonly collectively called fake news, continue to menace society. Perhaps, the impact of this age-old problem is presently most plain in politics and healthcare. However, fake news is affecting an increasing…
Compromising social network accounts has become a profitable course of action for cybercriminals. By hijacking control of a popular media or business account, attackers can distribute their malicious messages or disseminate fake information…
The Turing test aimed to recognize the behavior of a human from that of a computer algorithm. Such challenge is more relevant than ever in today's social media context, where limited attention and technology constrain the expressive power…
Cryptocurrencies represent one of the most attractive markets for financial speculation. As a consequence, they have attracted unprecedented attention on social media. Besides genuine discussions and legitimate investment initiatives,…
Fraud has severely detrimental impacts on the business of social networks and other online applications. A user can become a fake celebrity by purchasing "zombie followers" on Twitter. A merchant can boost his reputation through fake…
With the explosive growth of online social media, the ancient problem of information disorders interfering with news diffusion has surfaced with a renewed intensity threatening our democracies, public health, and news outlets' credibility.…
In 2016, a network of social media accounts animated by Russian operatives attempted to divert political discourse within the American public around the presidential elections. This was a coordinated effort, part of a Russian-led complex…
Bots are, for many Web and social media users, the source of many dangerous attacks or the carrier of unwanted messages, such as spam. Nevertheless, crawlers and software agents are a precious tool for analysts, and they are continuously…
In this work, we study the privacy risk due to profile matching across online social networks (OSNs), in which anonymous profiles of OSN users are matched to their real identities using auxiliary information about them. We consider…
Fake engagement is one of the significant problems in Online Social Networks (OSNs) which is used to increase the popularity of an account in an inorganic manner. The detection of fake engagement is crucial because it leads to loss of money…