Learn how to identify fake news bots on Twitter

“Maicon689469763478” tweeted the following ...

A name followed by multiple random numbers can be a bot indication on Twitter. However, the default is not a rule and you need to go deep into this theme. That's why researchers at Recorded Future gave a talk about this phenomenon at this year's Security Analyst Summit, according to Kaspersky. The idea is to show why bots are used and understand how they work.

The bots studied reproduced news about a specific number of countries, but the accounts were located elsewhere.

Researchers note that social networks already have their own algorithms to ban bots. Twitter, for example, focuses on unusual behavior: an account that tries to do more than 100 posts per minute or another that just retweeted and doesn't post “authoritative” content.

Even so, bot developers can circumvent this rule so as not to generate too many false positives. At the talk, “Recorded Future decided to focus on a particular feature to highlight a particular group of bots that, in this case, spread information about terrorist attacks only on Twitter, ” she tells Kasperksy.

One of the notable points is the location: the bots studied reproduced news about a specific number of countries, however, the accounts were located elsewhere. For example, it's like "Israel" or "United States" accounts sharing hundreds of news about Brazil.

Another common point is that all accounts used the same URL shorteners to publish the news, as these tools were used to give cybercriminals a report with, for example, the number of clicks on the link. “It was not the platforms we use as t.co or goo.gl, but others that are not public and created for the sole purpose of collecting data. They all have a minimalist orange and white design, and their use could also link the associated accounts, ”says Kaspersky.

Check out more features about bot groups below:

  • Have pseudonyms or similar names
  • Were created on the same day
  • The reproduced publications are from the same sites.
  • They have the same style
  • Make the same spelling mistakes
  • Follow each other or the same account
  • Use same tools to shorten URLs
  • Only active for the same period
  • Your profile descriptions are similar
  • Use generic or other people's images (easily found on Google) as account photo

Learn how to identify fake news bots on Twitter via TecMundo