Towards understanding bogus traffic service in online social networks  

作　　者：Ping HE Xuhong ZHANG Changting LIN Ting WANG Shouling JI 

机构地区：[1]College of Computer Science and Technology,Zhejiang University,Hangzhou 310027,China [2]Binjiang Institute of Zhejiang University,Hangzhou 310027,China [3]College of Information Sciences and Technology,Pennsylvania State University,University Park 17057-4846,USA

出　　处：《Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering》2024年第3期415-431,共17页信息与电子工程前沿（英文版）

摘　　要：Critical functionality and huge infuence of the hot trend/topic page(HTP)in microblogging sites have driven the creation of a new kind of underground service called the bogus traffic service(BTS).BTS provides a kind of illegal service which hijacks the HTP by pushing the controlled topics into it for malicious customers with the goal of guiding public opinions.To hijack HTP,the agents of BTS maintain an army of black-market accounts called bogus trafic accounts(BTAs)and control BTAs to generate a burst of fake trafic by massively retweeting the tweets containing the customer desired topic(hashtag).Although this service has been extensively exploited by malicious customers,little has been done to understand it.In this paper,we conduct a systematic measurement study of the BTS.We first investigate and collect 125 BTS agents from a variety of sources and set up a honey pot account to capture BTAs from these agents.We then build a BTA detector that detects 162218 BTAs from Weibo,the largest Chinese microblogging site,with a precision of 94.5%.We further use them as a bridge to uncover 296916 topics that might be involved in bogus trafic.Finally,we uncover the operating mechanism from the perspectives of the attack cycle and the attack entity.The highlights of our findings include the temporal attack patterns and intelligent evasion tactics of the BTAs.These findings bring BTS into the spotlight.Our work will help in understanding and ultimately eliminating this threat.

关 键 词：Online social networks MEASUREMENT Bogus traffic Black market 

分 类 号：TP39[自动化与计算机技术—计算机应用技术]