The Art of Social Bots: A Review and a Refined Taxonomy

Abstract: Social bots represent a new generation of bots that make use of online social networks (OSNs) as a command and control (C&C) channel. Malicious social bots were responsible for launching large-scale spam campaigns, promoting low-cap stocks, manipulating user's digital influence and conducting political astroturf. This paper presents a detailed review on current social bots and proper techniques that can be used to fly under the radar of OSNs defences to be undetectable for long periods of time. We also suggest a refined taxonomy of detection approaches from social network perspective, as well as commonly used datasets and their corresponding findings. Our study can help OSN administrators and researchers understand the destructive potential of malicious social bots and can improve the current defence strategies against them.