Related papers: Understanding the Cryptocurrency Free Giveaway Sca…
Scams -- fraudulent schemes designed to swindle money from victims -- have existed for as long as recorded history. However, the Internet's combination of low communication cost, global reach, and functional anonymity has allowed scam…
This paper presents a case study of a cryptocurrency scam that utilized coordinated and inauthentic behavior on Twitter. In 2020, 143 accounts sold by an underground merchant were used to orchestrate a fake giveaway. Tweets pointing to a…
This paper investigates the cryptocurrency giveaway scam with the YouTube live stream carried out on 5/15/2022 and 5/16/2022. In this scam scheme, the scammer plays a recorded video of a famous person in a YouTube live stream annotated with…
The rapid growth in popularity and hype surrounding digital assets such as art, video, and music in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has made them a lucrative investment opportunity, with NFT-based sales surpassing $25B in 2021 alone.…
This paper presents the first comprehensive analysis of an emerging cryptocurrency scam named "arbitrage bot" disseminated on online social networks. The scam revolves around Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) arbitrage and aims to lure victims…
As the indispensable trading platforms of the ecosystem, hundreds of cryptocurrency exchanges are emerging to facilitate the trading of digital assets. While, it also attracts the attentions of attackers. A number of scam attacks were…
The mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in wallet-related issues reported by ordinary users on social media platforms. In parallel, there is an increase in an emerging fraud trend called cryptocurrency-based technical…
Cryptocurrencies represent one of the most attractive markets for financial speculation. As a consequence, they have attracted unprecedented attention on social media. Besides genuine discussions and legitimate investment initiatives,…
Cryptocurrency is a fast-moving space, with a continuous influx of new projects every year. However, an increasing number of incidents in the space, such as hacks and security breaches, threaten the growth of the community and the…
As COVID-19 has been spreading across the world since early 2020, a growing number of malicious campaigns are capitalizing the topic of COVID-19. COVID-19 themed cryptocurrency scams are increasingly popular during the pandemic. However,…
In the past year, a new spamming scheme has emerged: sexual extortion messages requiring payments in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, also known as sextortion. This scheme represents a first integration of the use of cryptocurrencies by members…
With the widespread use of social media, organizations, and individuals use these platforms to raise funds and support causes. Unfortunately, this has led to the rise of scammers in soliciting fraudulent donations. In this study, we conduct…
Nowadays, with the rise of Internet access and mobile devices around the globe, more people are using social networks for collaboration and receiving real-time information. Twitter, the microblogging that is becoming a critical source of…
With its critical role in business and service delivery through mobile devices, SMS (Short Message Service) has long been abused for spamming, which is still on the rise today possibly due to the emergence of A2P bulk messaging. The effort…
Interest surrounding cryptocurrencies, digital or virtual currencies that are used as a medium for financial transactions, has grown tremendously in recent years. The anonymity surrounding these currencies makes investors particularly…
The rise in phishing attacks via e-mail and short message service (SMS) has not slowed down at all. The first thing we need to do to combat the ever-increasing number of phishing attacks is to collect and characterize more phishing cases…
In this study, we reveal, for the first time, popular online social networks (especially Twitter) are being extensively abused by miscreants to promote illicit goods and services of diverse categories. This study is made possible by…
Over the past few years, there has been a growth in activity, public knowledge, and awareness of cryptocurrencies and related blockchain technology. As the industry has grown, there has also been an increase in scams looking to steal…
In recent years, Twitter has seen a proliferation of automated accounts or bots that send spam, offer clickbait, compromise security using malware, and attempt to skew public opinion. Previous research estimates that around 9% to 17% of…
Traffic monetization is a crucial component of running most for-profit online businesses. One of its latest incarnations is cryptocurrency mining, where a website instructs the visitor's browser to participate in building a cryptocurrency…