Abdullah Almaatouq | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (original) (raw)
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Papers by Abdullah Almaatouq
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
Friendship is a fundamental characteristic of human beings and usually assumed to be reciprocal i... more Friendship is a fundamental characteristic of human beings and usually assumed to be reciprocal in nature. Despite this common expectation, in reality, not all friendships by default are reciprocal nor created equal. Here, we show that reciprocated friendships are more intimate and they are substantially different from those that are not. We examine the role of reciprocal ties in inducing more effective peer pressure in a cooperative arrangements setting and find that the directionality of friendship ties can significantly limit the ability to persuade others to act. Specifically, we observe a higher behavioral change and more effective peer-influence when subjects shared reciprocal ties with their peers compared to sharing unilateral ones. Moreover, through spreading process simulation, we find that although unilateral ties diffuse behaviors across communities, reciprocal ties play more important role at the early stages of the diffusion process.
PloS one, 2016
Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to '... more Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to 'tragedy of the commons' problems. In this paper, we show that the directionality of friendship ties affect the extent to which individuals can influence the behavior of each other. Moreover, we find that people are typically poor at perceiving the directionality of their friendship ties and that this can significantly limit their ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. This could lead to failures in establishing compatible norms, acting together, finding compromise solutions, and persuading others to act. We then suggest strategies to overcome this limitation by using two topological characteristics of the perceived friendship network. The findings of this paper have significant consequences for designing interventions that seek to harness social influence for collective action.
International Journal of Information Security, 2016
Spam in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is a sys-temic problem that imposes a threat to these servi... more Spam in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is a sys-temic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value to advertisers and potential investors , as well as negatively affecting users' engagement. As spammers continuously keep creating newer accounts and evasive techniques upon being caught, a deeper understanding of their spamming strategies is vital to the design of future social media defense mechanisms. In this work, we present a unique analysis of spam accounts in OSNs viewed through the lens of their behavioral characteristics. Our analysis includes over 100 million messages collected from Twitter over the course of one month. We show that there exist two behaviorally distinct categories of spammers and that they employ different spamming strategies. Then, we illustrate how users in these two categories demonstrate different individual properties as well as social interaction patterns. Finally, we analyze the detectability of spam accounts with respect to three categories of features, namely, content attributes, social interactions, and profile properties.
Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web science - WebSci '14, 2014
is a systemic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value... more is a systemic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value to advertisers and potential investors, as well as negatively affecting users' engagement. In this work, we present a unique analysis of spam accounts in OSNs viewed through the lens of their behavioral characteristics (i.e., profile properties and social interactions). Our analysis includes over 100 million tweets collected over the course of one month, generated by approximately 30 million distinct user accounts, of which over 7% are suspended or removed due to abusive behaviors and other violations. We show that there exist two behaviorally distinct categories of twitter spammers and that they employ different spamming strategies. The users in these two categories demonstrate different individual properties as well as social interaction patterns. As the Twitter spammers continuously keep creating newer accounts upon being caught, a behavioral understanding of their spamming behavior will be vital in the design of future social media defense mechanisms.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
Today, users share large amounts of information about themselves on their online social networks.... more Today, users share large amounts of information about themselves on their online social networks. Besides the intended information, this sharing process often also "leaks" sensitive information about the users -and by proxy -about their peers. This study investigates the effect of awareness about such leakage of information on user behavior. In particular, taking inspiration from "second-hand smoke" campaigns, this study creates "social awareness" campaign where users are reminded of the information they are leaking about themselves and their friends.
This paper presents the City Browser, a tool developed to analyze the complexities underlying hum... more This paper presents the City Browser, a tool developed to analyze the complexities underlying human mobility at the city scale. The tool uses data generated from mobile phones as a proxy to provide several insights with regards to the commuting patterns of the population within the bounds of a city. The three major components of the browser are the data warehouse, modules and algorithm, and the visualization interface. The modules and algorithm component utilizes Call Detail Records (CDRs) stored within the data warehouse to infer mobility patterns that are then communicated through the visualization interface. The modules and algorithm component consists of four modules: the spatial-temporal decomposition module, the home/work capturing module, the community detection module, and the flow estimation module. The visualiza-tion interface manages the output of each module to provide a comprehensive view of a city's mobility dynamics over varying time scales. A case study is presented on the city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where the browser was developed to better understand city mobility patterns.
In this work, we study the communication dynamics and information propagation of real-world event... more In this work, we study the communication dynamics and information propagation of real-world events through the contact networks of mobile phone users. Previous studies have shown that these 'bread-crumbs' of digital traces can act as in situ sensors for human behavior, allowing for quantifying social actions and conducting social studies at an unprecedented scale. However, most work in utilizing these proxies has focused on the study of human dynamics under regular and stationary situations, with little research on the quantitative understanding of human behavior under extreme events. In this work, we examine three events with different size and geographical scope and show that (i) human communications are both temporally and spatially localized during such events; and (ii) various types of events produce a distinct human communications signature both on a temporal and a spatial scale.
2014 IEEE 11th Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), 2014
Complex enterprise environments consist of globally distributed infrastructure with a variety of ... more Complex enterprise environments consist of globally distributed infrastructure with a variety of applications and a large number of activities occurring on a daily basis. This increases the attack surface and narrows the view of ongoing intrinsic dynamics. Thus, many malicious activities can persist under the radar of conventional detection mechanisms long enough to achieve critical mass for full-fledged cyber attacks. Many of the typical detection approaches are signature-based and thus are expected to fail in the face of zero-day attacks. In this paper, we present the building-blocks for developing a Malicious Activity Detection System (MADS). MADS employs predictive modeling techniques for the detection of malicious activities. Unlike traditional detection mechanisms, MADS includes the detection of both network-based intrusions and malicious user behaviors. The system utilizes a simulator to produce holistic replication of activities, including both benign and malicious, flowing within a given complex IT environment. We validate the performance and accuracy of the simulator through a case study of a Fortune 500 company where we compare the results of the simulated infrastructure against the physical one in terms of resource consumption (i.e., CPU utilization), the number of concurrent users, and response times. In addition to an evaluation of the detection algorithms with varying hyper-parameters and comparing the results.
Proceedings of the 1st ACM international workshop on Personal data meets distributed multimedia - PDM '13, 2013
ABSTRACT Extensive theoretic work attempts to address the role of social norms in describing, exp... more ABSTRACT Extensive theoretic work attempts to address the role of social norms in describing, explaining and predicting human behaviors. However, traditional methods of assessing the effect can be expensive and time consuming. In this work, we utilize data generated by the call detail records (CDRs) and geo-tagged Tweets (GTTs) as enabling proxies for understanding human activity patterns. We present preliminary results on the effect of social norms on communication patterns during different times of the day, including prayer times. Specifically, we investigate the variations in population behavioral patterns with respect to social norms between asynchronous (i.e., Twitter) and synchronous (i.e., phone calls) communication mediums in the city of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
Friendship is a fundamental characteristic of human beings and usually assumed to be reciprocal i... more Friendship is a fundamental characteristic of human beings and usually assumed to be reciprocal in nature. Despite this common expectation, in reality, not all friendships by default are reciprocal nor created equal. Here, we show that reciprocated friendships are more intimate and they are substantially different from those that are not. We examine the role of reciprocal ties in inducing more effective peer pressure in a cooperative arrangements setting and find that the directionality of friendship ties can significantly limit the ability to persuade others to act. Specifically, we observe a higher behavioral change and more effective peer-influence when subjects shared reciprocal ties with their peers compared to sharing unilateral ones. Moreover, through spreading process simulation, we find that although unilateral ties diffuse behaviors across communities, reciprocal ties play more important role at the early stages of the diffusion process.
PloS one, 2016
Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to '... more Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to 'tragedy of the commons' problems. In this paper, we show that the directionality of friendship ties affect the extent to which individuals can influence the behavior of each other. Moreover, we find that people are typically poor at perceiving the directionality of their friendship ties and that this can significantly limit their ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. This could lead to failures in establishing compatible norms, acting together, finding compromise solutions, and persuading others to act. We then suggest strategies to overcome this limitation by using two topological characteristics of the perceived friendship network. The findings of this paper have significant consequences for designing interventions that seek to harness social influence for collective action.
International Journal of Information Security, 2016
Spam in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is a sys-temic problem that imposes a threat to these servi... more Spam in Online Social Networks (OSNs) is a sys-temic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value to advertisers and potential investors , as well as negatively affecting users' engagement. As spammers continuously keep creating newer accounts and evasive techniques upon being caught, a deeper understanding of their spamming strategies is vital to the design of future social media defense mechanisms. In this work, we present a unique analysis of spam accounts in OSNs viewed through the lens of their behavioral characteristics. Our analysis includes over 100 million messages collected from Twitter over the course of one month. We show that there exist two behaviorally distinct categories of spammers and that they employ different spamming strategies. Then, we illustrate how users in these two categories demonstrate different individual properties as well as social interaction patterns. Finally, we analyze the detectability of spam accounts with respect to three categories of features, namely, content attributes, social interactions, and profile properties.
Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web science - WebSci '14, 2014
is a systemic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value... more is a systemic problem that imposes a threat to these services in terms of undermining their value to advertisers and potential investors, as well as negatively affecting users' engagement. In this work, we present a unique analysis of spam accounts in OSNs viewed through the lens of their behavioral characteristics (i.e., profile properties and social interactions). Our analysis includes over 100 million tweets collected over the course of one month, generated by approximately 30 million distinct user accounts, of which over 7% are suspended or removed due to abusive behaviors and other violations. We show that there exist two behaviorally distinct categories of twitter spammers and that they employ different spamming strategies. The users in these two categories demonstrate different individual properties as well as social interaction patterns. As the Twitter spammers continuously keep creating newer accounts upon being caught, a behavioral understanding of their spamming behavior will be vital in the design of future social media defense mechanisms.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
Today, users share large amounts of information about themselves on their online social networks.... more Today, users share large amounts of information about themselves on their online social networks. Besides the intended information, this sharing process often also "leaks" sensitive information about the users -and by proxy -about their peers. This study investigates the effect of awareness about such leakage of information on user behavior. In particular, taking inspiration from "second-hand smoke" campaigns, this study creates "social awareness" campaign where users are reminded of the information they are leaking about themselves and their friends.
This paper presents the City Browser, a tool developed to analyze the complexities underlying hum... more This paper presents the City Browser, a tool developed to analyze the complexities underlying human mobility at the city scale. The tool uses data generated from mobile phones as a proxy to provide several insights with regards to the commuting patterns of the population within the bounds of a city. The three major components of the browser are the data warehouse, modules and algorithm, and the visualization interface. The modules and algorithm component utilizes Call Detail Records (CDRs) stored within the data warehouse to infer mobility patterns that are then communicated through the visualization interface. The modules and algorithm component consists of four modules: the spatial-temporal decomposition module, the home/work capturing module, the community detection module, and the flow estimation module. The visualiza-tion interface manages the output of each module to provide a comprehensive view of a city's mobility dynamics over varying time scales. A case study is presented on the city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where the browser was developed to better understand city mobility patterns.
In this work, we study the communication dynamics and information propagation of real-world event... more In this work, we study the communication dynamics and information propagation of real-world events through the contact networks of mobile phone users. Previous studies have shown that these 'bread-crumbs' of digital traces can act as in situ sensors for human behavior, allowing for quantifying social actions and conducting social studies at an unprecedented scale. However, most work in utilizing these proxies has focused on the study of human dynamics under regular and stationary situations, with little research on the quantitative understanding of human behavior under extreme events. In this work, we examine three events with different size and geographical scope and show that (i) human communications are both temporally and spatially localized during such events; and (ii) various types of events produce a distinct human communications signature both on a temporal and a spatial scale.
2014 IEEE 11th Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), 2014
Complex enterprise environments consist of globally distributed infrastructure with a variety of ... more Complex enterprise environments consist of globally distributed infrastructure with a variety of applications and a large number of activities occurring on a daily basis. This increases the attack surface and narrows the view of ongoing intrinsic dynamics. Thus, many malicious activities can persist under the radar of conventional detection mechanisms long enough to achieve critical mass for full-fledged cyber attacks. Many of the typical detection approaches are signature-based and thus are expected to fail in the face of zero-day attacks. In this paper, we present the building-blocks for developing a Malicious Activity Detection System (MADS). MADS employs predictive modeling techniques for the detection of malicious activities. Unlike traditional detection mechanisms, MADS includes the detection of both network-based intrusions and malicious user behaviors. The system utilizes a simulator to produce holistic replication of activities, including both benign and malicious, flowing within a given complex IT environment. We validate the performance and accuracy of the simulator through a case study of a Fortune 500 company where we compare the results of the simulated infrastructure against the physical one in terms of resource consumption (i.e., CPU utilization), the number of concurrent users, and response times. In addition to an evaluation of the detection algorithms with varying hyper-parameters and comparing the results.
Proceedings of the 1st ACM international workshop on Personal data meets distributed multimedia - PDM '13, 2013
ABSTRACT Extensive theoretic work attempts to address the role of social norms in describing, exp... more ABSTRACT Extensive theoretic work attempts to address the role of social norms in describing, explaining and predicting human behaviors. However, traditional methods of assessing the effect can be expensive and time consuming. In this work, we utilize data generated by the call detail records (CDRs) and geo-tagged Tweets (GTTs) as enabling proxies for understanding human activity patterns. We present preliminary results on the effect of social norms on communication patterns during different times of the day, including prayer times. Specifically, we investigate the variations in population behavioral patterns with respect to social norms between asynchronous (i.e., Twitter) and synchronous (i.e., phone calls) communication mediums in the city of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.