Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages

Sara Bardi; Mauro Conti; Luca Pajola; Pier Paolo Tricomi

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12

Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages

Sara Bardi, Mauro Conti, Luca Pajola, Pier Paolo Tricomi^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Cyber Security

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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Abstract

Social Honeypots are tools deployed in Online Social Networks (OSN) to attract malevolent activities performed by spammers and bots. To this end, their content is designed to be of maximum interest to malicious users. However, by choosing an appropriate content topic, this attractive mechanism could be extended to any OSN users, rather than only luring malicious actors. As a result, honeypots can be used to attract individuals interested in a wide range of topics, from sports and hobbies to more sensitive subjects like political views and conspiracies. With all these individuals gathered in one place, honeypot owners can conduct many analyses, from social to marketing studies. In this work, we introduce a novel concept of social honeypot for attracting OSN users interested in a generic target topic. We propose a framework based on fully-automated content generation strategies and engagement plans to mimic legit Instagram pages. To validate our framework, we created 21 self-managed social honeypots (i.e., pages) on Instagram, covering three topics, four content generation strategies, and three engaging plans. In nine weeks, our honeypots gathered a total of 753 followers, 5387 comments, and 15739 likes. These results demonstrate the validity of our approach, and through statistical analysis, we examine the characteristics of effective social honeypots.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings
Editors	Mehdi Tibouchi, XiaoFeng Wang
Publisher	Springer
Pages	309-336
Number of pages	28
ISBN (Print)	9783031334870
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12
Publication status	Published - 2023
Event	21st International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2023 - Kyoto, Japan Duration: 19 Jun 2023 → 22 Jun 2023

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	13905 LNCS
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Conference

Conference	21st International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2023
Country/Territory	Japan
City	Kyoto
Period	19/06/23 → 22/06/23

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence
Instagram
Privacy
Social Honeypots
Social Networks
User Profiling

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12

978-3-031-33488-7_12Final published version, 848 KB

Cite this

Bardi, S., Conti, M., Pajola, L., & Tricomi, P. P. (2023). Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages. In M. Tibouchi, & X. Wang (Eds.), Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings (pp. 309-336). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 13905 LNCS). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12

Bardi, Sara ; Conti, Mauro ; Pajola, Luca et al. / Social Honeypot for Humans : Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages. Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings. editor / Mehdi Tibouchi ; XiaoFeng Wang. Springer, 2023. pp. 309-336 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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title = "Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages",

abstract = "Social Honeypots are tools deployed in Online Social Networks (OSN) to attract malevolent activities performed by spammers and bots. To this end, their content is designed to be of maximum interest to malicious users. However, by choosing an appropriate content topic, this attractive mechanism could be extended to any OSN users, rather than only luring malicious actors. As a result, honeypots can be used to attract individuals interested in a wide range of topics, from sports and hobbies to more sensitive subjects like political views and conspiracies. With all these individuals gathered in one place, honeypot owners can conduct many analyses, from social to marketing studies. In this work, we introduce a novel concept of social honeypot for attracting OSN users interested in a generic target topic. We propose a framework based on fully-automated content generation strategies and engagement plans to mimic legit Instagram pages. To validate our framework, we created 21 self-managed social honeypots (i.e., pages) on Instagram, covering three topics, four content generation strategies, and three engaging plans. In nine weeks, our honeypots gathered a total of 753 followers, 5387 comments, and 15739 likes. These results demonstrate the validity of our approach, and through statistical analysis, we examine the characteristics of effective social honeypots.",

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Bardi, S, Conti, M, Pajola, L & Tricomi, PP 2023, Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages. in M Tibouchi & X Wang (eds), Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 13905 LNCS, Springer, pp. 309-336, 21st International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2023, Kyoto, Japan, 19/06/23. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12

Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages. / Bardi, Sara; Conti, Mauro; Pajola, Luca et al.
Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings. ed. / Mehdi Tibouchi; XiaoFeng Wang. Springer, 2023. p. 309-336 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 13905 LNCS).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Conti, Mauro

AU - Pajola, Luca

AU - Tricomi, Pier Paolo

N1 - Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

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Bardi S, Conti M, Pajola L, Tricomi PP. Social Honeypot for Humans: Luring People Through Self-managed Instagram Pages. In Tibouchi M, Wang X, editors, Applied Cryptography and Network Security - 21st International Conference, ACNS 2023, Proceedings. Springer. 2023. p. 309-336. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-33488-7_12