Researchers Discover Large Twitter Botnet Pushing Ethereum Scam (techcrunch.com) 43
Trailrunner7 writes: Twitter has something of a bot problem. Anyone who uses the platform on even an occasional basis likely could point out automated accounts without much trouble. But detecting bots at scale is a much more complex problem, one that a pair of security researchers decided to tackle by building their own classifier and analyzing the characteristics and behavior of 88 million Twitter accounts. Using a machine learning model with a set of 20 distinct characteristics such as the number of tweets relative to the age of the account and the speed of replies and retweets, the classifier is able to detect bots with about 98 percent accuracy. The tool outputs a probability that a given account is a bot, with anything above 50 percent likely being a bot.
During their research, conducted from May through July, Jordan Wright and Olabode Anise of Duo Security discovered an organized network of more than 15,000 bots that was being used to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The botnet, which is still partially active, spoofs many legitimate accounts and even took over some verified accounts as part of a scheme designed to trick victims into sending small amounts of the cryptocurrency Ethereum to a specific address. Unlike most botnets, the Ethereum network has a hierarchical structure, with a division of labor among the bots. Usually, each bot in a network performs the same task, whether that's launching a DDoS attack or mining Bitcoin on a compromised machine. But the Ethereum botnet had clusters of bots with a three-tier organization. Some of the bots published the scam tweets, while others amplified those tweets or served as hub accounts for others to follow. Wright and Anise mapped the social media connections between the various accounts and looked at which accounts followed which others to create a better picture of the network. Anise and Wright will discuss the results of their research during a talk at the Black Hat USA conference on Wednesday and will release their detection tool as an open source project that day, too.
During their research, conducted from May through July, Jordan Wright and Olabode Anise of Duo Security discovered an organized network of more than 15,000 bots that was being used to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The botnet, which is still partially active, spoofs many legitimate accounts and even took over some verified accounts as part of a scheme designed to trick victims into sending small amounts of the cryptocurrency Ethereum to a specific address. Unlike most botnets, the Ethereum network has a hierarchical structure, with a division of labor among the bots. Usually, each bot in a network performs the same task, whether that's launching a DDoS attack or mining Bitcoin on a compromised machine. But the Ethereum botnet had clusters of bots with a three-tier organization. Some of the bots published the scam tweets, while others amplified those tweets or served as hub accounts for others to follow. Wright and Anise mapped the social media connections between the various accounts and looked at which accounts followed which others to create a better picture of the network. Anise and Wright will discuss the results of their research during a talk at the Black Hat USA conference on Wednesday and will release their detection tool as an open source project that day, too.
From the Dept. of Redundancy Department (Score:1)
"Ethereum scam" is redundant because Ethereum is already a scam. Well, unless you want your unbreakable, unchangeable contract to be rolled back because someone with more Ethereum wants it rolled back. They have done that more than once - when will they decide arbitrarily to do it again?
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when will they decide arbitrarily to do it again?
Whenever they damn well please. Ethereum is a joke. I'm convinced "proof of stake" was a supposed to be the over-the-top absurdity in Ethereum put in just to clue even the dumbest people in on the fact that it's a joke. But people are still buying into it!
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It's not a 'REAL' scam if it doesn't involve Russia though. C'mon Russia must be involved some how, like buried in the code somewhere, some Russian.
Crypto is getting nastier and nastier, be warned, your username, password and your crypto wealth is a close as a pair of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and your https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], ouch. It is going to a nasty place, time to get out.
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It's Dogecoin (DOGE). Yes, it's a joke, but it's still perfectly viable as a crypto currency.
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Large Twitter Botnet (Score:1)
"Large Twitter Botnet" sounds redundant.
Social media (Score:2)
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No kidding. Cryptocurrency in general died with Ethereum decided to fork in order to invalidate a bunch of transactions and steal Ethereum from many of its holders. The whole point of the blockchain is that you can neither confiscate a coin nor force a transaction. They provide in that instant that blockchain is a total failure. Blockchain permanence means about as much as unlimited cellular data.
Follow through (Score:1)
Now can we get the output of their system fed into Twitter's banning system? Please?
I mute most of those "free eth" tweets and it helps a bit, but it would be nice not to have to.
I've Seen Them (Score:2)
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They claim around 330 "monthly active users". I expect it's closer to 30 million.
Vanished into the "ether" (Score:2)
Seems like a scam on top of a scam!