Related papers: From Cracks to Crooks: YouTube as a Vector for Mal…
The role played by YouTube's recommendation algorithm in unwittingly promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories is not entirely understood. Yet, this can have dire real-world consequences, especially when pseudoscientific content is…
As a leading online platform with a vast global audience, YouTube's extensive reach also makes it susceptible to hosting harmful content, including disinformation and conspiracy theories. This study explores the use of open-weight Large…
YouTube is the second most visited website in the world and receives comments from millions of commenters daily. The comments section acts as a space for discussions among commenters, but it could also be a breeding ground for problematic…
YouTube, with millions of content creators, has become the preferred destination for watching videos online. Through the Partner program, YouTube allows content creators to monetize their popular videos. Of significant importance for…
In the last years, hundreds of new Youtube channels have been creating and sharing videos targeting children, with themes related to animation, superhero movies, comics, etc. Unfortunately, many of these videos are inappropriate for…
Online video piracy (OVP) is a contentious topic, with strong proponents on both sides of the argument. Recently, a number of illegal websites, called streaming cyberlockers, have begun to dominate OVP. These websites specialise in…
Recent advances in video manipulation techniques have made the generation of fake videos more accessible than ever before. Manipulated videos can fuel disinformation and reduce trust in media. Therefore detection of fake videos has garnered…
Machine-learning methods have already been exploited as useful tools for detecting malicious executable files. They leverage data retrieved from malware samples, such as header fields, instruction sequences, or even raw bytes, to learn…
Malware authors often use cryptographic tools such as XOR encryption and block ciphers like AES to obfuscate part of the malware to evade detection. Use of cryptography may give the impression that these obfuscation techniques have some…
Phishing is a form of cybercrime and a threat that allows criminals, phishers, to deceive end users in order to steal their confidential and sensitive information. Attackers usually attempt to manipulate the psychology and emotions of…
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,…
Malicious advertisement URLs pose a security risk since they are the source of cyber-attacks, and the need to address this issue is growing in both industry and academia. Generally, the attacker delivers an attack vector to the user by…
The move of propaganda and disinformation to the online environment is possible thanks to the fact that within the last decade, digital information channels radically increased in popularity as a news source. The main advantage of such…
In-browser cryptojacking involves hijacking the CPU power of a website's visitor to perform CPU-intensive cryptocurrency mining, and has been on the rise, with 8500% growth during 2017. While some websites advocate cryptojacking as a…
The communication revolution has perpetually reshaped the means through which people send and receive information. Social media is an important pillar of this revolution and has brought profound changes to various aspects of our lives.…
Social media, once hailed as a vehicle for democratization and the promotion of positive social change across the globe, are under attack for becoming a tool of political manipulation and spread of disinformation. A case in point is the…
YouTube is a popular video platform for sharing creative content and ideas, targeting different demographics. Adults, older children, and young children are all avid viewers of YouTube videos. Meanwhile, countless young-kid-oriented…
How can web services that depend on user generated content discern fake social engagement activities by spammers from legitimate ones? In this paper, we focus on the social site of YouTube and the problem of identifying bad actors posting…
Telegram is one of the most used instant messaging apps worldwide. Some of its success lies in providing high privacy protection and social network features like the channels -- virtual rooms in which only the admins can post and broadcast…
Malware spread among websites and between websites and clients is an increasing problem. Search engines play an important role in directing users to websites and are a natural control point for intervening, using mechanisms such as…