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Socialbots

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining

  • 113 Accesses

Synonyms

Fake profiles; Infiltration; Social network security

Glossary

Advanced persistent threat (APT):

A class of sophisticated cyber-attacks that target organizations

Infiltration:

A means of compromising the social network graph by connecting with a large number of users; socialbots can be executed to infiltrate social networks

Influence bots:

A bot that tries to influence conversation on a specific topic

Socialbot:

An artificial, machine-operated profile in a social network that mimics human users, looks genuine, and behaves in a sophisticated manner

Spambot:

A computer program designed to help send spam

Sybil attack:

A type of attack in which a malicious user creates multiple fake identities (Sybils) in order to unfairly increase power and influence within a target community

Definition

In recent years, online social networks (OSNs) are becoming an essential part of our lives. However, OSNs have also been abuses by cyber criminals that exploit the platform for malicious purposes...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Rager st., 8410501, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Abigail Paradise & Asaf Shabtai

  2. University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), Rager st., 8410501, College Park, MD, USA

    Rami Puzis

Authors
  1. Abigail Paradise
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  2. Rami Puzis
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  3. Asaf Shabtai
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abigail Paradise .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Reda Alhajj

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Jon Rokne

Section Editor information

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    V. S. Subrahmanian

  2. RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), Melbourne, Australia

    Jeffrey Chan

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Paradise, A., Puzis, R., Shabtai, A. (2018). Socialbots. In: Alhajj, R., Rokne, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_110212

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