Share this page!

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Twitter logo
3 Nov, 4 tweets, 3 min read
It's election day in the USA, and like any other day, porn/adult services botnets are spewing their low-effort salacious spam. Here's a Korean-language network we recently stumbled upon. #TuesdayThoughts #GOTV2020

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
This pornbot network consists of 162 accounts created between October 14th and November 3rd, 2020. All have default profile pics, randomly generated 15 character usernames, and send almost all of their tweets via automation app cubi(dot)so. ImageImageImageImage
The bots in this network tweet pretty much 24/7, with occasional gaps at what appear to be random times. The entire botnet was inactive for most of October 30th and 31st, and many of the accounts have few or no tweets prior to those dates. Image
Who do the accounts in this network follow? Almost all of them follow exactly one account, @work_cubi, which appears to be the official account of cubi(dot)so, the botting service used by this botnet. Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Conspirador Norteño

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @conspirator0

Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
3 Nov
We quite frankly have no idea why these accounts are all tweeting the word "momotarousuper1" (or what momotarousuper1 even means), but let's take a look at them anyway. #TuesdayThoughts

cc: @ZellaQuixote Image
We found 118 accounts tweeting "momotarousuper1" over and over, all created in December 2012, March 2013, or April 2013. Their names are quite repetitive, with most account names beginning with "momotalou" and ending with X's and numbers. ImageImageImageImage
All 118 accounts in this botnet send all of their tweets via automation service twittbot(dot)net, and they tweet on very similar schedules. What do they tweet? ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
1 Nov
How did @SVNewsAlerts, a popular purveyor of melodramatic "breaking news" tweets that frequently get retweeted far and wide, rack up 74.1K followers in 6 months? #SundayThoughts

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The first accounts to follow @SVNewsAlerts look like #MAGA followback accounts (similar numbers of followers/following). @SVNewsAlerts only follows one account, though (its own alt, @SVNews_Reporter), so surely it didn't build its massive audience via followbacks. . . or did it?
As it turns out, @SVNewsAlerts (permanent ID 1263205289618214913) wasn't always named @SVNewsAlerts. For the first couple months of its Twitter existence, it was named @republican_owl, and at least one tweet indicating that it used to follow back is still live.
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
1 Nov
We've done a decent amount of research on the use of GAN-generated images over the last two years, mostly fake face "photos" such as those produced by thispersondoesnotexist(dot)com. Here are all of our related threads in one place.

cc: @ZellaQuixote
GAN is an abbreviation for "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used to produce these images (and other things). Here's a "brief" description of how StyleGAN, the GAN behind thispersondoesnotexist(dot)com, works.
machinelearningmastery.com/introduction-t…
Here's the first network we found in the wild using GAN-generated face pics (29 of 52 accounts, created in two batches). The profiles featured repetitive biographies mentioning family, friends, country, and weapons.

Read 14 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
31 Oct
OMG! So Important For BITCOIN! Check out all these bots with GAN-generated profile pics tweeting links to some random cryptocurrency website! #SaturdayShenaniGANs #ThisPersonDoesNotExistInFactNoneOfThesePeopleExistDotCom

cc: @ZellaQuixote
We found a total of 28 accounts with GAN-generated profile pics linking to ethereumcryptocurrency(dot)com. All were created in September or October 2020, and all tweet exclusively via automation service dlvr(dot)it.
As is the case with all face pics generated by StyleGAN (the neural network used by thispersondoesnotexist(dot)com and similar tools), the major facial features (particularly eyes) are in the same position on the profile pic of each account in this botnet.
Read 6 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
31 Oct
It's the day before Halloween, and a #MAGA account by the name of @PepeNewsNow has racked up over 16K followers in its 16 days of existence. We took a look at them, and found a couple of interesting anomalies. #FridayFeeling #AltWankers

cc: @ZellaQuixote
For starters, a disproportionate number of @PepeNewsNow's followers (6182 of 16701, 37%) were created in March 2020 or later. We've seen this pattern before among #MAGA Twitter accounts, but have not seen the same phenomenon among left-leaning accounts.
Secondly, a lot of @PepeNewsNow's followers (2090 of 16701, 12.5%) have either never tweeted or have yet to tweet in 2020. Despite their apparent dormancy, they woke up in decent numbers to follow an account created in October 2020.
Read 5 tweets
Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
27 Oct
We took a closer look at this Arabic-language fake engagement botnet that we found promoting blue-check shady social media services vendor @sendthetrend. It consists of more accounts than we originally noticed (240 accounts rather than 188).

cc: @ZellaQuixote
The 240 accounts in this botnet were created in batches between November 28th, 2016 and January 5th, 2017, with the majority created on January 5th, 2017. Almost all of their tweets are retweets (99.5%) and almost all were sent via Mobile Web (M2) (99.9%).
These accounts retweet a variety of Arabic-language accounts, with the most frequent flier being @dk_alsabah. Since we don't speak Arabic (and don't trust the accuracy of machine translation tools), we're unsure if there's a theme to the accounts/content amplified.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

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

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

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!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @conspirator0