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Nearly 90,000 Sex Bots Invaded Twitter in 'One of the Largest Malicious Campaigns Ever Recorded on a Social Network' (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, Twitter's security team purged nearly 90,000 fake accounts after outside researchers discovered a massive botnet peddling links to fake "dating" and "romance" services. The accounts had already generated more than 8.5 million posts aimed at driving users to a variety of subscription-based scam websites with promises of -- you guessed it -- hot internet sex. The accounts were first identified by ZeroFOX, a Baltimore-based security firm that specializes in social-media threat detection. The researchers dubbed the botnet "SIREN" after sea-nymphs described in Greek mythology as half-bird half-woman creatures whose sweet songs often lured horny, drunken sailors to their rocky deaths. ZeroFOX's research into SIREN offers a rare glimpse into how efficient scammers have become at bypassing Twitter's anti-spam techniques. Further, it demonstrates how effective these types of botnets can be: The since-deleted accounts collectively generated upwards of 30 million clicks -- easily trackable since the links all used Google's URL shortening service.
What's with this "nearly" stuff. That's not how to write a sensationalist headline. Though I give you props for using "sexbot".
Someone had to do it.
Even if they can't get their ancient mythology right, they at least got the attack detected.
I thought the spam bots on Twitter were bad.
If you have ever used any online dating service you know this is true. 9 out of 10 "women" on such services are either prostitutes, sex workers of some other sort, or some dude who works in the marketing department of a porn site. The 1 out of 10 that are actual single women looking for a man are usually fat, unattractive, have six kids, are looking to take a guy for his money, or are just plain nasty in one way or another. Maybe 1 out of 10000 actual women on online dating services are genuine, decent, reasonably attractive, mentally stable women with no hidden agenda, but their profiles haven't been touched in years because they got snatched up by someone almost immediately.
If the promise was humans who would do anything for arbitrary internet user for free, that is another issue.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's both.
What did they get wrong? It seems like they got the right mythological creature.
Suck my DAMN balls
Did they have machine gun jubblies?
sig: sauer
...a Nigerian prince showed up at my door. Was disappointed, but since I already paid...
have we found a way to get a robot to be POTUS ? That should save on a lot of travel expenses. Just elect new software every 4 years and term limit microsoft and apple.
Nullius in verba
What did they get wrong? It seems like they got the right mythological creature.
They were right, it's sirens. They lived on an island and lured sailors to try to land by their enchanted singing; the ships were then shipwrecked on the rocks. The sailors did not need to be drunk though, or horny - in the ancient stories it was the song, not the sex. There were various descriptions of them, but generally half woman and half bird, and there are various stories that feature them, the most famous being Homer's Odyssey.
Managing the security of computer systems is not a problem that can merely be attributed to incompetence, it is also a problem because it is hard and at the end of the day systems configurations need to reach a compromise over what something can and cannot do on top of the surprise attack vector of the day. While I certainly would not call this a hack, it is good that these things happen so that we can better formulate responses. Better security management relies on those who find, and use, the exploits.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Well, since Twitter provides its own link-shortening...
It's the article that's got its mythology wrong. Sirens made the sex cries. Harpies were the bird-like ladies, however.
I'm fine, thanks for asking.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Oh thank goodness. I was starting to wonder if Twitter even cared about the problem. I've had bots liking & retweeting my old tweets for months now.
Their actions and profiles were always the same: a bunch of random retweets, and then a saucy profile picture and a pinned tweet talking about sex and inviting you to their dating website. There's no way this wasn't detectable.