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Bots are user accounts in social media which are controlled by computer programs. Similar to many other things, they are used for both good and evil purposes. One nefarious use-case for them is to spread misinformation or biased data in the…
Within OSNs, many of our supposedly online friends may instead be fake accounts called social bots, part of large groups that purposely re-share targeted content. Here, we study retweeting behaviors on Twitter, with the ultimate goal of…
Signature-based botnet detection methods identify botnets by recognizing Command and Control (C\&C) traffic and can be ineffective for botnets that use new and sophisticate mechanisms for such communications. To address these limitations,…
Recent research has shown a substantial active presence of bots in online social networks (OSNs). In this paper we utilise our past work on studying bots (Stweeler) to comparatively analyse the usage and impact of bots and humans on…
As malicious actors employ increasingly advanced and widespread bots to disseminate misinformation and manipulate public opinion, the detection of Twitter bots has become a crucial task. Though graph-based Twitter bot detection methods…
Malicious actors create inauthentic social media accounts controlled in part by algorithms, known as social bots, to disseminate misinformation and agitate online discussion. While researchers have developed sophisticated methods to detect…
Large Language Model-driven (LLM-driven) social bots pose a growing threat to online discourse by generating human-like content that evades conventional detection. Existing methods suffer from limited detection accuracy due to overreliance…
Research on social bot detection plays a crucial role in maintaining the order and reliability of information dissemination while increasing trust in social interactions. The current mainstream social bot detection models rely on black-box…
The openness feature of Twitter allows programs to generate and control Twitter accounts automatically via the Twitter API. These accounts, which are known as bots, can automatically perform actions such as tweeting, re-tweeting, following,…
Accurate bot detection is necessary for the safety and integrity of online platforms. It is also crucial for research on the influence of bots in elections, the spread of misinformation, and financial market manipulation. Platforms deploy…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) become more sophisticated, there is a possibility to harness LLMs to power social media bots. This work investigates the realism of generating LLM-Powered social media bot networks. Through a combination of…
The rapid spread of false information and persistent manipulation attacks on online social networks (OSNs), often for political, ideological, or financial gain, has affected the openness of OSNs. While researchers from various disciplines…
In recent years, social bots have been using increasingly more sophisticated, challenging detection strategies. While many approaches and features have been proposed, social bots evade detection and interact much like humans making it…
Social bots have become widely known by users of social platforms. To prevent social bots from spreading harmful speech, many novel bot detections are proposed. However, with the evolution of social bots, detection methods struggle to give…
The popularity of social media platforms such as Twitter has led to the proliferation of automated bots, creating both opportunities and challenges in information dissemination, user engagements, and quality of services. Past works on…
The characterization and detection of bots with their presumed ability to manipulate society on social media platforms have been subject to many research endeavors over the last decade. In the absence of ground truth data (i.e., accounts…
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…
While existing social bot detectors perform well on benchmarks, their robustness across diverse real-world scenarios remains limited due to unclear ground truth and varied misleading cues. In particular, the impact of shortcut learning,…
While most online social media accounts are controlled by humans, these platforms also host automated agents called social bots or sybil accounts. Recent literature reported on cases of social bots imitating humans to manipulate…
Social media platforms enable instant and ubiquitous connectivity and are essential to social interaction and communication in our technological society. Apart from its advantages, these platforms have given rise to negative behaviors in…