Hi all!
We have a busy evening lined up, with two great speakers for you. We will
also talk a little about Def Con's Badge Hacking Challenge, and I will have
some badges with the IO connectors installed.
As usual we will be in the downstairs bar at The Phoenix, Cavendish
Square, W1G 0PP
The venue is ours from 17:30 until 23:00, talks start 19:30.
Entry is free, sorry bar rules are 18+ only.
+++
1st Speaker:
Chris Sumner (Suggy), Online Privacy Foundation
Title:
Predicting Susceptibility to Social Bots
Synopsis:
Are some Twitter users more naturally predisposed to interacting with
social bots and can social bot creators exploit this knowledge to
increase the odds of getting a response?
Social bots are growing more intelligent, moving beyond simple reposts
of boilerplate ad content to attempt to engage with users and then
exploit this trust to promote a product or agenda. While much research
has focused on how to identify such bots in the process of spam
detection, less research has looked at the other side of the
question--detecting users likely to be fooled by bots.
This talk provides a summary of research and developments in the
social bots arms race before sharing results of our experiment
examining user susceptibility.
We find that a users' Klout score, friends count, and followers count
are most predictive of whether a user will interact with a bot, and
that the Random Forest algorithm produces the best classifier, when
used in conjunction with appropriate feature ranking algorithms. With
this knowledge, social bot creators could significantly reduce the
chance of targeting users who are unlikely to interact.
Users displaying higher levels of extroversion were more likely to
interact with our social bots. This may have implications for
eLearning based awareness training as users higher in extraversion
have been shown to perform better when they have greater control of
the learning environment.
Overall, these results show promise for helping understand which users
are most vulnerable to social bots.
+++
2nd Speaker:
Dominic Spill
Title:
USBProxy - building a cheap and open USB MitM device
Synopsis:
With the introduction of FaceDancer, there has been a surge of
interest in USB security. USBProxy is an open framework for the
BeagleBone Black to make it simpler for anyone to monitor, inject or
modify data carried over a USB connection. While the FaceDancer will
allow devices to be written on a host system, we are able to go
further and man-in-the-middle connections to existing devices as well.
The BeagleBone Black also enables us to operate at USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
+++
Info about DC4420 (Defcon London) - http://www.dc4420.org/
Info about the venue - http://www.phoenixcavendishsquare.co.uk/
Cheers, Tony
We have a busy evening lined up, with two great speakers for you. We will
also talk a little about Def Con's Badge Hacking Challenge, and I will have
some badges with the IO connectors installed.
As usual we will be in the downstairs bar at The Phoenix, Cavendish
Square, W1G 0PP
The venue is ours from 17:30 until 23:00, talks start 19:30.
Entry is free, sorry bar rules are 18+ only.
+++
1st Speaker:
Chris Sumner (Suggy), Online Privacy Foundation
Title:
Predicting Susceptibility to Social Bots
Synopsis:
Are some Twitter users more naturally predisposed to interacting with
social bots and can social bot creators exploit this knowledge to
increase the odds of getting a response?
Social bots are growing more intelligent, moving beyond simple reposts
of boilerplate ad content to attempt to engage with users and then
exploit this trust to promote a product or agenda. While much research
has focused on how to identify such bots in the process of spam
detection, less research has looked at the other side of the
question--detecting users likely to be fooled by bots.
This talk provides a summary of research and developments in the
social bots arms race before sharing results of our experiment
examining user susceptibility.
We find that a users' Klout score, friends count, and followers count
are most predictive of whether a user will interact with a bot, and
that the Random Forest algorithm produces the best classifier, when
used in conjunction with appropriate feature ranking algorithms. With
this knowledge, social bot creators could significantly reduce the
chance of targeting users who are unlikely to interact.
Users displaying higher levels of extroversion were more likely to
interact with our social bots. This may have implications for
eLearning based awareness training as users higher in extraversion
have been shown to perform better when they have greater control of
the learning environment.
Overall, these results show promise for helping understand which users
are most vulnerable to social bots.
+++
2nd Speaker:
Dominic Spill
Title:
USBProxy - building a cheap and open USB MitM device
Synopsis:
With the introduction of FaceDancer, there has been a surge of
interest in USB security. USBProxy is an open framework for the
BeagleBone Black to make it simpler for anyone to monitor, inject or
modify data carried over a USB connection. While the FaceDancer will
allow devices to be written on a host system, we are able to go
further and man-in-the-middle connections to existing devices as well.
The BeagleBone Black also enables us to operate at USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
+++
Info about DC4420 (Defcon London) - http://www.dc4420.org/
Info about the venue - http://www.phoenixcavendishsquare.co.uk/
Cheers, Tony