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Social media groups dedicated to cryptocurrencies in Russia have been attacked by bots in what resembles an anti-bitcoin and gender campaign. Their comments on the biggest social media platform in Russia are triggered by certain keywords like crypto and blockchain, community members noticed.
Bots Flood Vkontakte groups with anti-cryptocurrency comments.
In the past week or so, crypto-themed groups on Russia’s state-controlled social network Vkontakte (VK) have been seeing a growing number of comments seeking to discredit cryptocurrencies and related technologies, the crypto news outlets Bits.And rbc crypto reported it.
Comments appear below publications and related articles regarding crypto assets. All of them are similar, such as: "It's more expensive to snoop through the crypto, it's always a big risk," "Anybody still talking about bitcoins?" or "People who talk about cryptography don't even know what they're talking about."
According to Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at FX aggregator Bestchange.ru, these bots appeared for the first time in the community of his platform and official page on Vkontakte on Feb. 13. Accounts are typical of these attacks and are only newly recorded or stolen inactive accounts.
Robots are often used to deliver spam and ads or to lure users into fraudulent schemes, but this time they are not. Messages do not have external links and their content is restricted to abstract criticism of cryptocurrencies and activities such as trading.
Vkontakte’s press service told RBC that the company “does not register an increase in the number of bots on the platform” and assured that its moderators “promptly respond to complaints” about bots that post the same information en masse.
Zuborev also pointed out that it is still difficult to determine exactly how robots respond. As far as he is concerned, they ignore messages containing pictures but are enabled by those containing words such as "binance," "bitcoin," or "blockchain." The attacks became more intense this week, Analyst wrote it down.
Telegram-based crypto channels unaffected by bots.
It is difficult to understand the significance and efficacy of such an anti-cryptocurrency campaign, noted the president to challenge the banking platform Indefibank, Sergey Mendeleev, given that most Russophone cryptologists do not use this social platform, "for reasons that are plain."
Mendeleev believes that someone ordered the attacks so that they may later refer to "the great volume of negative reviews on the most popular social network." The expert noted that such attacks were not seen through the crypto channels on Telegram.
Vkontakte was founded in 2006 by the Russian businessman Pavel Durov who subsequently launched the messenger of the Telegram. In April 2014, Durov was fired as vk's chief executive officer. He implied that the move was due to his refusal to hand over the user's personal data to Russian law enforcement authorities, This includes members of a group dedicated to Euromaidan demonstrations in Ukraine, He left the Russian Federation.
In September of that same year, mail.ru became the sole owner of the company. In December 2021, the Russian public bank gazprombank and the sogaz insurance company bought back 57.3% of vk's shares, becoming the owners of its majority shareholding. Vkontakte recently launched an NFT service.
In your opinion, who is responsible for attacks against crypto-groups on vkontakte? Reflect on the topic in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Burdun Iliya / Shutterstock.com
