Thread by @conspirator0

We recently posted this analysis of a botnet that followed @va_shiva early in his Twitter career. As it turns out, this botnet is larger than the paltry 3840 accounts we initially found, and @va_shiva is not the only current or former GOP candidate it follows.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1244411551546847233

To find the remainder of the botnet, we searched the followers of other big accounts followed by the accounts that followed @va_shiva for additional batch-created accounts, and continued this process until we hit diminishing returns. Spoiler: we found a LOT of accounts.

We found a total of 105081 accounts that we believe to be part of the botnet. All were created in batches, exceeding 6000 accounts created per day at one point, and tweet(ed) exclusively via the Twitter website when active.

Additional commonalities between the accounts in this botnet:

• none have ever "liked" a tweet
• similar naming scheme
• they follow similar numbers of accounts
• same tweets repeated across multiple accounts
• weird tweets starting with "Id:" or "ScreenName:"

This botnet is multilingual. The majority of the traffic (64%) is in English, but it has generated noticeable tweet volume in Portuguese, Indonesian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Tagalog, and Turkish as well. It has tweeted in 45 languages total.

This botnet primarily follows the official accounts of brands, sports figures, musicians, actors, and other non-political promotional accounts. We did, however find it following a few GOP candidates in addition to the aforementioned @va_shiva. . .

Portions of this botnet follow four current or former GOP Congressional candidates:

@iheartmindy (2020 House) - 3759 bot followers
@AntonioSabatoJr (2018 House) - 19455 bot followers
@theangiestanton (2020 House) - 1230 bot followers
@va_shiva (2020 Senate) - 3840 bot followers