Profile picture
Ben Nimmo @benimmo
, 10 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
Thread: The funniest thing about that network of blue-haired pornbots which has been going around for a while?

The way they quote Jane Austen.

#BotSpot

medium.com/dfrlab/botspot…
This is the first one I found. Oddly, it was being followed by @StoppingWW3, which was Ian56789's backup account at the time.
Reverse search the profile picture, and see how many more accounts use the same one.

Talk about mass production...
It's obviously a botnet: identical profile pics, style of bio, content.

What's interesting is the creation dates, and the way the screen names are different from the handles (e.g. @ermolaeva_olya / "Gladys Flatcher").

These look like hijacked accounts.
This is part of a much bigger network, with different profile pics but the same style.

And between the porn posts, they share random phrases from "Sense and Sensibility."

Compare the tweet with Google books.
Looks like someone set up the network to scrape and post random excerpts from "Sense and Sensibility", to insert more variety in the tweets, and thereby escape the Twitter algorithm.

At least they chose a good book to scrape from.
They also posted authored tweets, but with typos.

We love typos. They make for unique searches.
Scanning mentions of these typos using @sysomos, and deleting all duplicate results, returned a list of over 35,000 unique names.

Other phrases they used returned over 75,000 accounts, but the phrases were less unique.

Even the lower number makes a big botnet.
These bots posted low volumes of retweets, likes and follows. The main common feature was the linkage to porn sites.

One of those sites had an open WhoIs registration, in St Petersburg, Russia. Others gave less detail, but were also Russian registered.
Unclear whether the main purpose of the botnet was to sell likes and retweets, or advertise the porn sites, or both.

What's striking is how big it is, and the tricks it used to evade detection. Twitter has upped its game. So have the bot herders. / Thread ends.
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Ben Nimmo
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member and get exclusive features!

Premium member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year)

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!