Towards active detection of identity clone attacks on online social networks

Abstract

Online social networks (OSNs) are becoming increasingly popular and Identity Clone Attacks (ICAs) that aim at creating fake identities for malicious purposes on OSNs are becoming a significantly growing concern. Such attacks severely affect the trust relationships a victim has built with other users if no active protection is applied. In this paper, we first analyze and characterize the behaviors of ICAs. Then we propose a detection framework that is focused on discovering suspicious identities and then validating them. Towards detecting suspicious identities, we propose two approaches based on attribute similarity and similarity of friend networks. The first approach addresses a simpler scenario where mutual friends in friend networks are considered; and the second one captures the scenario where similar friend identities are involved. We also present experimental results to demonstrate flexibility and effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Finally, we discuss some feasible solutions to validate suspicious identities.