FURI | Fall 2018

The Lifecycle of Botnets on Social Media

Bots on social media platforms like Twitter deceive users into believing they are interacting with real users and distort the conversation. The goal is to study the lifecycle of bots and botnets to better understand how these bots evolve over time and to prevent users from being affected by them. The research will be conducted by monitoring a sample of the botnet containing 250,000 bots known as the “Star Wars Botnet.” The botnet’s activity will be monitored both within the network and with other users. This research will allow the researcher to understand the purpose of running a large-scale botnet.