Internet security researchers have uncovered a huge crypto-scam botnet that worked to spread a fake "cryptocurrency giveaway" on legitimate Twitter accounts.
Comprised of at least 15,000 bots in a three-tiered hierarchical structure, the botnet evolved over time to remain undetected.
Duo Security's principal R&D engineer Jordan Wright and data scientist Olabode Anise published their findings in a report titled "Dont @ Me: Hunting Twitter Bots at Scale," ahead of a presentation at the 2018 Black Hat cyber security conference in Las Vegas.
The researchers said they detected the malicious activity after analyzing more than 88 million Twitter accounts between May and July 2018,.
Bots first created a spoofing of a legitimate cryptocurrency-associated account by stealing its display name and profile picture.
These accounts would subsequently spread fake links in replies to genuine users' tweets, and were also seen to take on the identity of a celebrity, or news organization.
The botnet employed "amplification bots" - other fake accounts that are used to give "likes" to scam tweets to "to artificially inflate the tweet's popularity and make the cryptocurrency scam appear legitimate."
"Users are likely to trust a tweet more or less depending on how many times it's been retweeted or liked. Those behind this particular botnet know this, and have designed it to exploit this very tendency," the researchers said.
"This is a more complex problem than many realize, and there is still work to be done", the research paper says.
The Duo research team will be highlighting the tools and techniques they used to uncover the cryptocurrency scam botnet at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference.
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