Bots are coming

[root]

Bots are coming​

Defending against AI fraudsters on social

media Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that help businesses simplify their interactions with customers on the Web are increasingly being used for fraudulent purposes. A growing number of bad bots are misleading users. In terms of the number of fake tools in the Internet environment, the United States is in the lead. According to analysts, during COVID-19, virtual assistants provoked a kind of Internet pandemic.

FALSE ACTIVITY "VKONTAKTE"
In August 2021, Roskachestvo discovereda new scheme of fraudulent advertising of game bots on VKontakte. In the communities of the social network, where mostly minors are registered, allegedly real dialogues of users about quick earnings were spread. Players were offered to mine virtual "diamonds" that can be exchanged for real money.
Next, the bot demanded to invite friends or pay for VIP access, and to withdraw the earned funds - to pay a commission for conversion. After the operation, the victim's account was blocked and the money disappeared.
The name of the bots may change, but the most relevant one in VKontakte is GameBot, they specified in Roskachestvo. The department stressed that

most schoolchildren do not read the user agreement in gaming services, where developers often disclaim responsibility for paying remuneration​

The GameBot doc says, in part:

• the service can, but does not undertake to withdraw funds to electronic accounts for the most active users
• the amount of remuneration is determined by the owner of the service based on the user's activity, the amount of his voluntary donations, as well as from his personal subjective-evaluative opinion.

Roskachestvo sent information on the identification of the attackers to Roskomnadzor and the administration of the social network.
The described scheme, like many others, essentially boils down to the use of social engineering techniques by fraudsters, Mikhail Sytnik, a leading content analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said in an interview with RSpectr. According to him, as a result of such actions of hackers, a person most often risks a certain amount or the safety of his data.
As RSpectr was informed in the VKontakte press service, in fact, a check is being carried out, and the specified community is blocked. The company stressed that they are serious about the task of protecting users from intruders and are trying to ensure an extremely fair approach to content moderation.
VKontakte, press service:
- For many years we have been using the most effective set of measures - a hybrid method of moderation. We not only promptly respond to requests from users, public organizations and official requests from state regulators, but also conduct proactive internal monitoring.
Our team carefully checks every complaint and removes materials that violate VKontakte rules or legal requirements, and also blocks communities and profiles of attackers.

ADAPTATION TO FRAUD
Information security expert, CEO of AtreIdea Sergey Belov, in a conversation with RSpectr, stated that the use of bots in messengers, social networks and other resources is a convenient tool for providing support to clients in any areas where at least minimal interactive interaction is required according to clear patterns.
66% of requests in the financial sector, retail and telecom are already solved by robots, according to the Markswebb study .
However, the expert says,

The use of automated tools in criminal activities is a trend that has been gaining momentum over the past ten years.​

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Image: RSpectr, Freepik.com
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[root]

Sergey Belov, AtreIdea:

- As soon as a business starts to use any technologies designed to simplify interaction with a client, fraudsters adapt the most popular ones for their own purposes.

For example, at the end of November 2020, users around the world were faced with the fact that the announced new generations of Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X game consoles could not be purchased. The so-called grinch bots * - virtual resellers - pre-booked a product in order to sell it later at a premium. Scammers constantly use such software during periods of large sales.

The Imperva Threat Research Laboratory calculatedThat fall, bad bot traffic to retail websites increased 788 percent ahead of Black Friday in the fall.

Bots are just a pretext for deceiving gullible users, you should not demonize the technology of Internet assistants, says Artem Myshenkov, security engineer of the hosting provider and REG.RU domain registrar. In an interview with RSpectr, he said that, in addition to the fraudulent ploy with the cultivation of "diamonds" discovered by Roskachestvo, there are a huge number of criminal schemes on the Internet.

Artem Myshenkov, REG.RU:

- These are fake investments in cryptocurrencies, options trading, selling sports betting predictions, a big "win" in the lottery. Even payments from the American government and earnings on the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. The imagination of scammers is limitless.

In July 2021, Sberbank revealed a scheme with the participation of bots to send messages to users of instant messengers about contests with cash prizes in foreign currency. To convert the winnings into rubles, the winner had to pay a commission, and to do this, inform the imaginary online interlocutor of the bank card details.

In April 2021, the number of fake Facebook posts offering to install the "latest update" of the messenger reached 5.7 thousand. The message contained a short link, following which users were taken to a phishing site with a fictitious login form. As a result, the victim risked losing access to his account, as well as the personal data (PD) that cybercriminals use to extort and send spam, are sold on the darknet.

Cases of fraud with the help of voice bots have become more frequent: they request PD, which fraudsters use to obtain loans​

Timofey Zaitsev, manager for work with corporate clients of KORUS Consulting Group, pointed out this tendency in a conversation with RSpectr.

Leila Salieva, Marketing Director of Epicstars (a Russian b2b platform for working with bloggers), told RSpectr that if you take a large number of bots, you can artificially trend custom themes or hashtags.

Leila Salieva, Epicstars:

- This is both a surge in the mention of a product, that is, in fact, about advertising, where bots act as bloggers, and more serious things - involvement in fraudulent schemes, harassment, disinformation on global themes.

The methods of cybercriminals are almost no different from those that were earlier, they just work with fake people - bot accounts, agreed with the opinion of RSpectr's interlocutors L. Salieva.

At the end of August, the Internet Protection Society announced a market research for the sale of bots. It turned out that

A person with any level of technical literacy and for little money can promote a public on social networks to several tens of thousands of subscribers.​

GROWTH AND PENETRATION

The main danger of a fake chat bot is that it is often difficult to distinguish it from the real one, T. Zaitsev said. According to him, the attackers make the link to the virtual interlocutor as similar as possible to the real one, put suitable avatars, and it is easy to mistake him for representatives of a particular company. Another danger, according to the expert, lies in the use of game mechanics that make the user easier to make contact.

Timofey Zaitsev, KORUS Consulting Group:

- Bots are fully automated, and fraudsters do not have to waste time communicating with the user. This allows for less effort to attract new victims. They are often children and adolescents who are not familiar with common deception schemes and cannot critically assess the situation.

Bot activity has skyrocketed during the pandemic, particularly on Twitter. According to experts from Carnegie Mellon University, they can make up 45-60% of the accounts in which COVID-19 is discussed. Scientists made such a conclusion based on the study of more than 200 million tweets. In their analysis, they also identified over 100 types of inaccurate stories about the coronavirus and found that bots made up 82% of the top 50 and 62% of 1,000 influential retweeters.

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[root]

Imperva has recorded a 372% increase in bad traffic on healthcare websites worldwide since September 2020​

This laboratory of threats also counted the penetration of fake programs in the world - good and bad: 40.8% of all requests on the Web last year did not come from people, analysts believe. Real virtual assistants accumulated 15.2% of traffic, fake ones - 25.6%. Overall, user searches from real accounts declined 5.7 percent in 2020.

HOW TO RECOGNIZE A FALSE ASSISTANT?


Bots can be calculated by carefully examining the profile.


Leila Salieva, Epicstars:


- Usually there is little personal information, the recent date of creation, the avatar is more often a picture, not a photo, and abnormally increased activity in some of the social networks on one topic: whether it be politics, computer games, some kind of investment, etc. Further.


Kaspersky Lab recommends that users, first of all, be critical of everything that is offered on the Internet, says M. Sytnik. Especially when it comes to extremely generous offers or actions that need to be taken immediately.


Mikhail Sytnik, Kaspersky Lab:


- Do not follow links from suspicious emails, messages in instant messengers and social networks, even if they were sent by friends. In addition, it is useful to use a reliable security solution that will prevent you from going to a phishing or scam site.


Experts recommend services for complex analytics of indicators on communication platforms, for example, Live Dune, it works on all online platforms.


It is worth noting a method created in August 2021 to identify malicious bots on social networks using artificial intelligence. The solution was invented at the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The development will help not only identify bots, but also evaluate their quality, roughly calculate the cost of an attack and understand its specifics.


Artem Myshenkov, REG.RU:


- Scammers can target not only the funds themselves, but also bank card details and passwords. Therefore, you need to pay attention to the site on which you enter your data, look at the domain name of the resource - for fake web pages it may differ by only one letter from the original. It is also worth checking the security of the connection: whether the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol is connected, which ensures secure data transfer between the browser and the site.


Timofey Zaitsev, KORUS Consulting Group:


- Check the links to bots on the official website and do not give them your PD. Warn elderly relatives and children about online scams. If you still fall for the tricks of a fraudster, immediately contact the law enforcement agencies and the organization on whose behalf the fraud was carried out. In some cases, the company may suspend the transaction and return the money.

Sergey Belov, AtreIdea:

- The main protection is the active work of platforms to identify and suppress such activities (automatically and in response to user complaints), as well as active training in digital hygiene in schools. Similar events are already being held in a number of schools, often at the initiative of commercial organizations.

You need to remember a simple truth: no one on the Internet will give you money just like that and will not share a secret way of making money that he could use himself, experts remind.

* Grinch bots - named after the fairytale character in the book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss.

Image: RSpectr, Freepik.com
Source

 

[Частный детектив. Армения. Ереван.]

Imperva has recorded a 372% increase in bad traffic on healthcare websites worldwide since September 2020​

This laboratory of threats also counted the penetration of fake programs in the world - good and bad: 40.8% of all requests on the Web last year did not come from people, analysts believe. Real virtual assistants accumulated 15.2% of traffic, fake ones - 25.6%. Overall, user searches from real accounts declined 5.7 percent in 2020.

Surprisingly China is not # 1

 

[Частный детектив. Москва.]

Artificial intelligence has evolved so much?

 

[alexsey1417]

In the article, everything is clear and on the shelves!

 

[David Mamedov]

В статье все четко и по полочкам!

Полностью с вами согласен.

 

[Частный детектив Азербайджан]

According to forecasts, it should be so.

 

[Частный детектив Донецк]

According to forecasts, it should be so.

What other predictions?

 

[poles1469]

I completely agree with the opinion of the author!