Researchers Unveil Crypto Scam Involving 15,000 Twitter Bots

Researchers at digital security provider Duo Security have discovered a massive and sophisticated botnet broadcasting fake cryptocurrency giveaways on Twitter.

As revealed in a report released on Monday, the social media platform hosts at least 15,000 crypto scam bots. The discovery was made after the analysis of 88 million Twitter accounts from May to July. Using machine learning algorithms, the researchers illustrated the architecture of automated Twitter accounts and shed light on their behavior.

The paper, titled “Dont @ Me: Hunting Twitter Bots at Scale,” described the malicious nature of the bots. Typically, they impersonate the legitimate accounts of well-known crypto personalities, crypto exchanges, celebrities, and influential people, among them US President Donald Trump and Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin. The bots promise to give large amounts of cryptocurrency away in exchange for small initial sums sent by the intended victims.

“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,” Duo Security researchers noted.

Responding to the findings, a spokesperson for Twitter said:

“Twitter is aware of this form of manipulation and is proactively implementing a number of detections to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.”

The company further explained that, in many cases, spammy content is hidden on Twitter on the basis of automated detections. “Less than 5% of Twitter accounts are spam-related,” the representative added.

Last month, the social media platform tried to put an end to the “Elon Musk giving away ETH” scam by automatically blocking users with this name. The initiative followed an open letter signed by prominent members of the cryptocurrency community, with the likes of Binance’s CEO and the Icelandic Blockchain Foundation calling on Twitter to take action. They pointed out the hypocrisy of the platform in banning cryptocurrency-related advertising activities while allowing bots to run rampant.