Cryptocurrency scam botnet discovered on Twitter

Researchers of Duo Security have unveiled a huge botnet that creates duplicate versions of legitimate accounts on Twitter, in a false attempt to spread cryptocurrency giveaways. A network of 15,000 bots was discovered in a three-tier framework spreading the cryptocurrency scam.

To add to this trouble, the scam was followed by the creation of other “hub” accounts “in an effort to appear legitimate”. The sting was spread by replying to tweets posted by “valid” accounts, which contained a link that would allure the users to the scam.

Describing the functions of the botnet, as reported by Coindesk, the team is set to present its paper at the 2018 Black Hat Cybersecurity event.

The paper read: “[Searching for connected bots] resulted in a 3-tiered botnet structure consisting of the scam publishing bots, the hub accounts (if any) the bots were following, and the amplification bots that like each created tweet. The mapping shows that the amplification bots like tweets from…