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In the last decade, Online Social Networks (OSNs) have taken the world by storm. They range from superficial to professional, from focused to general-purpose, and, from free-form to highly structured. Numerous people have multiple accounts…
The argument for persistent social media influence campaigns, often funded by malicious entities, is gaining traction. These entities utilize instrumented profiles to disseminate divisive content and disinformation, shaping public…
One of the reasons behind the success of Social Network Analysis is its simple and general graph model made of nodes (representing individuals) and ties. However, when we focus on our daily on-line experience we must confront a more complex…
Today, many different types of scams can be found on the internet. Online criminals are always finding new creative ways to trick internet users, be it in the form of lottery scams, downloading scam apps for smartphones or fake gambling…
Since the early 2010s, social network-based influence technologies have grown almost exponentially. Initiated by the U.S. Army's early OEV system in 2011, a number of companies specializing in this field have emerged. The most (in)famous…
Chat-based cybercrime has emerged as a pervasive threat, with attackers leveraging real-time messaging platforms to conduct scams that rely on trust-building, deception, and psychological manipulation. Traditional defense mechanisms, which…
The introduction of the social networking platform has drastically affected the way individuals interact. Even though most of the effects have been positive, there exist some serious threats associated with the interactions on a social…
Social media platforms, particularly Telegram, play a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions and opinions on global and national issues. Unlike traditional news media, Telegram allows for the proliferation of user-generated content with…
The widespread of Online Social Networks and the opportunity to commercialize popular accounts have attracted a large number of automated programs, known as artificial accounts. This paper focuses on the classification of human and fake…
Given the reach of web platforms, bad actors have considerable incentives to manipulate and defraud users at the expense of platform integrity. This has spurred research in numerous suspicious behavior detection tasks, including detection…
Bots, in recent times, have posed a major threat to enterprise networks. With the distributed nature of the way in which botnets operate, the problems faced by enterprises have become acute. A bot is a program that operates as an agent for…
Online Social Networks (OSNs) are a cornerstone in modern society, serving as platforms for diverse content consumption by millions of users each day. However, the challenge of ensuring the accuracy of information shared on these platforms…
A very large number of people use Online Social Networks daily. Such platforms thus become attractive targets for agents that seek to gain access to the attention of large audiences, and influence perceptions or opinions. Botnets,…
Deep Learning as a field has been successfully used to solve a plethora of complex problems, the likes of which we could not have imagined a few decades back. But as many benefits as it brings, there are still ways in which it can be used…
In recent years, major social media platforms have implemented increasingly strict moderation policies, resulting in bans and restrictions on conspiracy theory-related content. To circumvent these restrictions, conspiracy theorists are…
Most past work on social network link fraud detection tries to separate genuine users from fraudsters, implicitly assuming that there is only one type of fraudulent behavior. But is this assumption true? And, in either case, what are the…
This paper presents a study on the growing threat of "sleeper social bots," AI-driven social bots in the political landscape, created to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion. We based the name sleeper social bots on their…
Socialbots are intelligent software controlling all the behavior of fake accounts in an online social network. They use artificial intelligence techniques to pass themselves off as human social media users. Socialbots exploit user trust to…
Telegram has grown into a significant platform for news and information sharing, favored for its anonymity and minimal moderation. This openness, however, makes it vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories. In this study, we…
Majority illusion occurs in a social network when the majority of the network nodes belong to a certain type but each node's neighbours mostly belong to a different type, therefore creating the wrong perception, i.e., the illusion, that the…