Why Twitter’s bot problem is a looming security challenge
The persons or groups behind Twitter’s thousands of bot accounts have realized they can attack people without triggering Twitter’s protective security policies, presenting a rapidly evolving information security challenge for the social media network. Late last month, bot researchers at ProPublica and the Atlantic Council were attacked by a campaign of Twitter bots, which spammed the victim accounts with thousands of retweets and likes, causing Twitter to temporarily suspend certain accounts for unusually high activity. Ben Nimmo, Information Defense Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, was personally targeted by the bot campaign and live-tweeted his analysis of the attacks, which included impersonations of Atlantic Council user accounts that tweeted fake content, like a message alleging that Nimmo had died. “They certainly wanted to intimidate me by faking those accounts. That was about scaring me, rather than me getting blocked,” Nimmo told Cyberscoop. Nimmo noted that he was easily […]
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