The University of British Columbia

December 23, 2011 | Student Achievements

Yazan Boshmaf and Ildar Muslukhov Received Best Paper Award

Yazan Boshmaf and Ildar Muslukhov received Best Paper award on December 9th at the 27th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) held in Orlando, Florida, for their paper The Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialize for Fame and Money". The paper, which reports on a study of new security and privacy risks associated with online social networks, was chosen among 39 accepted papers, which in their turn were chosen for the conference proceedings and presentation through highly selective peer-review process with acceptance rate of about 20%. Specifically Yazan and Ildar, along with their supervisors Dr. Matei Ripeanu and Dr. Konstantin Beznosov, studied how feasible and resource-consuming it is for criminals to infiltrate on a large scale a Facebook-like online social network using fake accounts and coordinated socialbots in order to obtain users' private data or stage other malicious activities. One of the oldest security conferences, ACSAC brings together on annual basis some 200 security professionals from academia, government and industry with an interest in applied security to learn about the latest advances in the field, as well as to exchange ideas and experiences. The conference is renowned for its worldwide attendance, high quality program, and attendee networking.