Researchers Find At Least 15,000 Bots Sharing Cryptocurrency Scams On Twitter
The study provides a bit of insight into the ongoing issue Twitter continues to face dealing with bot accounts.
If you’re interested in cryptocurrency and you use Twitter chances are good you’ve seen Tweets offering cryptocurrency giveaways which are, in fact, phishing scams solely designed to trick unwary users into turning over their private keys.
Recently, researchers at Duo Security used a simple machine learning approach to unmask botnet, made up of more than 15,000 bots, responsible for spreading the phishing tweets. According to the researchers the botnet utilizes a three tiered approach where an initial post is liked and then retweeted by other bots which are spun up by the botnet operator. In this fashion the phishing tweets are given the semblance of credibility by the other bots.
For some popular crypto personalities, impersonating bots piggybacking official tweets and touting false claims about giveaways have become something of a scourge over the last year. Given how widespread the scams they share have become on the platform, it’s not a big surprise that there’s a network of bots at work. What sets this particular botnet apart from others is the fact that rather than every bot simply acting in the same manner, such as spamming the same tweet across the Twitter-verse, bots with different jobs coordinated. Some bots share the initial tweet, while others like it or retweet it. This level of sophistication is not the norm for these types of attacks.
It’s true that earlier this year Twitter clamped down on bot accounts. Many can attest to seeing a large fall in follower counts after what has been widely referred to as the great Twitter Purge. However, although Twitter attempted to tackle the bot issue head on with a mass deletion, it’s also true that there has been a surge of phishing targetting cryptocurrency on the platform.
While Twitter may have a long way to go sorting out malicious bots, users can still turn to the Cryptonite browser add-on to protect them. Cryptonite is specifically designed to combat phishing on Twitter by providing a green visual indicator, and it also blocks phishing sites.
The MetaCert Protocol is a trust and reputation threat intelligence system for verifying web resources. It addresses a number of attack vectors, encompassing solutions for anti-phishing, child safety, brand protection, crypto-address verification, and news credibility. Find out more about the MetaCert Protocol, ask questions, and leave suggestions on both our White Paper and Technical Paper. You can also join our Telegram community to stay up to date on our blockchain project. Remember to install Cryptonite to protect yourself from phishing scams before it’s too late.
