HomeWinBuzzer NewsTwitter Removes 90,000 SIREN Porn Scam Botnet Twitter Accounts

Twitter Removes 90,000 SIREN Porn Scam Botnet Twitter Accounts

The SIREN botnet has tweeted a total of 8.5 million times, resulting in over 30 million clicks from users. It links users to dating and pornography sites that house more fake profiles to encourage subscriptions.

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Almost 90,000 accounts have been removed from Twitter following ZeroFox's announcement of a huge . Dubbed SIREN, it lures users in with sexually explicit messages, before linking them to pornography and dating sites.

Though the websites are all legal, ZeroFox reports that many of the subscription services mislead users. Profiles on the sites are often operated by the hosts and share user data with affiliate scam sites.

30 Million Clicks

Thanks to the security company's neural network, we now have a good idea how SIREN works. The users have posted over 8.5 million links, traveling through several redirect services before reaching the destination. The bots either reply directly to a user's tweets or attract users with their profile and bio.

These messages are generated using an identifiable pattern, starting with a sexual phrase and following with an encouragement to visit a link. The bots appear to repeat the same phrases, though most don't make a whole lot of sense. For example, one of most popular is “want vulgar, young man?”

Despite this, the results have been very successful. Over 30 million users have clicked the links, and no doubt some of them fell for the scam. A big chunk of the bots have their language in Russian and have Cyrillic characters in their usernames, leading researchers to pinpoint the Eastern block of Europe.

Thanks to ZeroFox's disclosure to Twitter on July 10, all of the accounts have been terminated, but it's not clear how long the respite will last. It's likely bots will appear again in another form, if not quite as wide-reaching as SIREN.

You can find the full information on the ZeroFox site.

Last Updated on August 4, 2017 11:57 am CEST

SourceZeroFox
Ryan Maskell
Ryan Maskellhttps://ryanmaskell.co.uk
Ryan has had a passion for gaming and technology since early childhood. Fusing the skills from his Creative Writing and Publishing degree with profound technical knowledge, he enjoys covering news about Microsoft. As an avid writer, he is also working on his debut novel.

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