‘Socialbots’ pose IT security threat on campuses

Socialbots had an 80 percent success rate during the two-month experiment.

University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver researchers unleashed an army of more than 100 socialbots—technology that poses as people on social networks—and harvested personal information from 3,000 Facebook users, demonstrating how vulnerable campus networks are to attacks through social media sites.

In “The Socialbot Network,” released Nov. 1, a group of UBC researchers claim they used a cluster of fake Facebook accounts to obtain more than 250 gigabytes of personal information from Facebook users who accepted friend requests from socialbots during the two-month experiment.

The socialbots have profile pictures, personal information, and posts like any other regular Facebook regular.…Read More

Oops! We could not locate your form.