weapons of mass distraction
TRANSCRIPT
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Weapons of Mass Distraction Sock Puppetry for Fun & Profit
October 2014 {azhar|marco|haroon}@thinkst.com
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Already seen clear signs of this
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Amateurs cut access
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Overt censorship is routed around
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UGC - User Generated Content
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UGC is a new(ish) paradigm
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Nothing truly new under the sun
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rent-a-crowds
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How will Censorship handle UGC?
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“So it’s not only certain people have a license to speak, now everyone
has a license to speak. It’s a question of who gets heard.”
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Censorship 2.0
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Censorship 2.0
This is Profoundly Important
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Censorship 2.0
This is Profoundly Important
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rent-a-crowds
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Oxford Dictionary of English
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If we were evil-corp (or evil.gov)
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what can be done ?
what is being done ?
what will be done ?
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Challenge: How to measure efficacy
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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Why mailing lists?
• “Interesting” people still use it!
• Personal curiosity
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what we wanted to do
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Assume: An email is going to a mail list
Can we make more people read it ?
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Assume: An email is going to a mail list
Can we make less people read it ?
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How do we measure if more (or less) people read our mail?
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Link Clicks
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How do we write mail content worth clicking on ?
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Plagiarize, Pilfer, Plunder & Pitch*
*but don’t be too exciting
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1. Send email with link
2. Puppets send several replies to make a longer discussion thread
3. Wait 48 hours
4. Count clicks
1. Send email with link
2. Wait 48 hours
3. Count clicks
Control email Experimental email
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0
100
200
300
400
Liberation Tech Full Disclosure
Control Sock Puppet Thread
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1. Send email with link
2. Sock puppets send several separate emails starting new threads
3. Wait 48 hours
4. Count clicks
1. Send email with link
2. Wait 48 hours
3. Count clicks
Control email Experimental email
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0
75
150
225
300
Liberation Tech Full Disclosure
Control Distraction Threads
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“rai” also had another success
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Improved Distract Att From X
• combine both approaches
• when a email on X appears, start several distraction threads
• attract attention to the distractor threads by lengthen the threads with sock puppet mails
• prepare juicy distractor threads ahead of time
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Uses for evil.{corp,gov}
• start distractor threads around emails from opponents others you wish not to get as much attention
• add light discussion to attract attention to your emails
• discredit opponents by doing a bad sock puppetry operation on their behalf
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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Why Polls ?
• Used by a few major news sites !
• Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, etc.!
• Many more random bloggers!
• Even a Golden Globe movie awards poll!
• Readers see the results of polls
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• 2009 TIME person of the year poll vs 4chan!
• 2012 TIME person of the year poll vs 4chan!
• 2013 TIME person of the year poll vs Gains & Marek
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precedents of poll gaming
• 2009 TIME person of the year poll vs 4chan!
• 2012 TIME person of the year poll vs 4chan!
• 2013 TIME person of the year poll vs Gains & Marek
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Surely this is a solved problem
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Landslide Win
Subtle Win
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HuffPo Readers Poll
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Subtle Win
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Landslide Win
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these polls have a serious credibility problem
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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in 140 seconds..
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!
TL;DR
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Gilad Lotan bought followers and did some cool analysis of the network graph*
*https://medium.com/i-data/fake-friends-with-real-benefits-eec8c4693bd3
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Timeline Crowding
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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what & why reddit
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what & why reddit
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what & why reddit
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Score factors
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Upvote articles we want to promote
Downvote articles we want to kill
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So first we needed accounts..
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Our accounts seemed broken
reddits secret sauce
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But we have > 50 accounts !
What we can do with 50 accounts?
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On small subreddits it’s easy to get a new article on to front page
by up voting
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On large subreddits like worldnews, 50 isn’t enough for
a full win
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Upvote articles we want to promote
Downvote articles we want to kill
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Let’s also try down voting..
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downvote stuff to knock into moderation queue !
below user/subreddit preference
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Trickle Downvoting: only down vote as many up votes as new
articles have
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Up-vote our target Trickle down-vote others
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Win!
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What would happen if we down voted all new articles as they
appeared?
Mass-DownVoting
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Began with worldnews
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Then..
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Much speculation ensued ..
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lizard ppl
putin-bot
*** For the record, we had nothing to do with /r/technology
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Simultaneously, we ran the same thing on netsec…
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But netsec moderators responded with intelligent discussion and
roped in official reddit admins to talk about the problem..
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This should have been much easier to spot
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This should have been much easier to spot
• voting in synch • signup times • some common email domains • pattern of names • ip-addresses from known open proxies • user-agents: headers • low karma interactors
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BTW… Two months later
to
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This should have been much easier to spot
• voting in synch • signup times • some common email domains • pattern of names • ip-addresses from known open proxies • user-agents: headers • low karma interactors
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Growing Personas for Karma
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23 Links - Karma: 99
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2009 2013
23 Links - Karma: 99
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0
2250
4500
6750
9000
2009 2013 2013 (November)
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
![Page 115: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/115.jpg)
Why News Sites?
![Page 116: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/116.jpg)
![Page 117: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/117.jpg)
Can we influence this panel? Get articles on it or keep articles
off it?
![Page 118: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/118.jpg)
![Page 119: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/119.jpg)
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Panel features recent articles with the most page views
![Page 121: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/121.jpg)
Page views we can control!
![Page 122: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/122.jpg)
![Page 123: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/123.jpg)
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![Page 130: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/130.jpg)
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![Page 132: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/132.jpg)
but we need an account on the site to share the article
![Page 133: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/133.jpg)
At the time of writing, we have at least 30 000 accounts
** NYT Admins - Sorry!
![Page 134: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/134.jpg)
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NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
![Page 137: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/137.jpg)
NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
![Page 138: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/138.jpg)
NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
Cost to register 30k accounts: $ 0.12
![Page 139: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/139.jpg)
NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
Cost to register 30k accounts: $ 0.12Cost to share 30k stories: $ 0.18
![Page 140: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/140.jpg)
NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
Cost to register 30k accounts: $ 0.12Cost to share 30k stories: $ 0.18Trivially manipulate the NYT front page: Priceless
![Page 141: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/141.jpg)
NYT spends millions on their news gathering apparatus
Cost to register 30k accounts: $ 0.12Cost to share 30k stories: $ 0.18Trivially manipulate the NYT front page: Priceless
![Page 142: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/142.jpg)
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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![Page 147: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/147.jpg)
In Brief
• Disqus let’s you drop a few lines of .js in your page which magically gives you an entire commenting system.
• Comments can be voted up/down which affects order.
• User profiles are visible across sites and your comments are gathered in your Disqus profile page.
• Admins get a nifty interface to moderate and maintain their comment threads.
![Page 148: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/148.jpg)
Used by Wordpress blogs, Tumblrs, soccer mom forums
![Page 149: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/149.jpg)
and CNN, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, The Next Web, NPR, The Atlantic,
IGN, The Daily Telegraph etc
![Page 150: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/150.jpg)
They don’t control the full message
![Page 151: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/151.jpg)
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• Login: left as an exercise for the reader
• Mass post:
export thread="threadid";export msg="mymessage"; (for i in `seq -f "userprefix%g" 1 100`;do echo "curl -b \"${i}.cookies\" -d \”thread=${thread}&message=${msg}&api_key=${API_KEY}\” http://disqus.com/api/3.0/posts/create.json”;done;)|parallel
• Mass vote:
export post="postid";export vote="1"; (for i in `seq -f "userprefix%g" 1 100`;do echo "curl -b \"${i}.cookies\" -d \”post=${post}&vote=${vote}&api_key=${API_KEY}\” http://disqus.com/api/3.0/posts/vote.json”;done;)|parallel
![Page 156: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/156.jpg)
• Mass downvote:
export post="postid";export vote="-1"; (for i in `seq -f "userprefix%g" 1 100`;do echo "curl -b \"${i}.cookies\" -d \”post=${post}&vote=${vote}&api_key=${API_KEY}\” http://disqus.com/api/3.0/posts/vote.json";done;)|parallel
• Bonus: Flag posts to temporarily make them disappear
export post="postid"; (for i in `seq -f "userprefix%g" 1 100`;do echo "curl -b \"${i}.cookies\" -d \”post=${post}&api_key=${API_KEY}\” http://disqus.com/api/3.0/posts/report.json";done;)|parallel
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![Page 159: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/159.jpg)
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![Page 161: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/161.jpg)
Pretty much complete control of Disqus forums
(with 1 line of bash script)
![Page 162: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/162.jpg)
Wut?
![Page 163: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/163.jpg)
• User registration isn’t IP-limited that we’ve encountered
• Email verification isn’t a requirement
• Guest voting _is_ IP-limited
• Open proxy lists bypass this trivially
![Page 164: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/164.jpg)
![Page 165: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/165.jpg)
ALL OF THE SAME ATTACKS
![Page 166: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/166.jpg)
![Page 167: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/167.jpg)
Flag as spam 4/5 times to remove (try it yourself on fox news :)
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livefyre: one more thing..
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
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mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
mail listsonline pollstwitterredditnews sitescomment systems
![Page 176: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/176.jpg)
Are these attacks happening?
![Page 177: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/177.jpg)
4chan polls
![Page 178: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/178.jpg)
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-users/
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http://www.commondreams.org/hambaconeggs-screen-names
![Page 183: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/183.jpg)
Remember:
We discovered that flagging posts got them killed?
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![Page 185: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/185.jpg)
JTRIG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intelligence_Group
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JTRIG
![Page 187: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/187.jpg)
JTRIG
![Page 188: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/188.jpg)
Disqus seems ripe for the picking. So we went looking active armies.
![Page 189: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/189.jpg)
Most commented thread on CNN’s highest voted comment
![Page 190: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/190.jpg)
Most commented thread on CNN’s highest voted comment
![Page 191: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/191.jpg)
Approach
![Page 192: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/192.jpg)
Pick slightly controversial topic
![Page 193: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/193.jpg)
![Page 194: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/194.jpg)
Pick news orgs that cover this topic
![Page 195: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/195.jpg)
![Page 196: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/196.jpg)
Then
• Use Disqus API to get a list of popular stories
• For each story, use the API to pull user info
• Link users to stories they commented on
!
• and…
![Page 197: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/197.jpg)
SETEC REAL WOOF CRETS
![Page 198: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/198.jpg)
Cue a bunch of similar attempts to look at the data
![Page 199: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/199.jpg)
Decided to focus on voting
![Page 200: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/200.jpg)
Voting metric
• Pull all comments for random story.
• For each comment pull the non-guest voters.
• For each voter retrieve their registration time.
• Calculate the variation in voter age on each comment.
![Page 201: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/201.jpg)
Voter Age VariationVa
riatio
n
0
450
900
1350
1800
Comment100 200 300 400
![Page 202: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/202.jpg)
Voter Age VariationVa
riatio
n
0
450
900
1350
1800
Comment100 200 300 400
![Page 203: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/203.jpg)
Voter Age VariationVa
riatio
n
0
75
150
225
300
Comment100 200 300 400
![Page 204: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/204.jpg)
What stood out
• Accounts had been registered within minutes of each other.
• Their usernames and profile names had a regular pattern:
• Username: <Firstname><Surname>
• Profile name: <Firstname> <Surname>
![Page 205: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/205.jpg)
![Page 206: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/206.jpg)
Not exactly convincing
![Page 207: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/207.jpg)
What about their emails addresses?
(Hint: you really shouldn’t be able to retrieve a Disqus user’s email address)
![Page 208: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/208.jpg)
We found an unmask attack that returns an email address for a
profile name*
*Already reported and fixed
![Page 210: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/210.jpg)
We had our suspicions, but thought the puppet army would be larger.
!
Time to enumerate.
![Page 211: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/211.jpg)
User Enumeration• Disqus users get a unique ID
• This ID is a counter (yay!)
• There are unrestricted APIs to query user information (yay! yay!)
• https://disqus.com/api/3.0/users/details.json
• We can lookup email addresses for each enumerated user with our unmask attack (yay! yay! yay!)
• So we pick a lower and upper bound beyond the lowest and highest known puppet IDs, making a range of 5k users.
• Pull details for all users.
![Page 212: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/212.jpg)
5k users. Now what?
• Filter on known values:
• Must have username, name and email patterns, and not be verified.
• Age is already taken into account with the ID, so less relevant.
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![Page 215: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/215.jpg)
![Page 216: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/216.jpg)
Inter-registration timeTi
me
(s)
0
2,5
5
7,5
10
Registration number50 100 150 200
![Page 217: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/217.jpg)
Inter-registration timeTi
me
(s)
0
2,5
5
7,5
10
Registration number50 100 150 200
![Page 218: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/218.jpg)
Inter-registration timeTi
me
(s)
0
2,5
5
7,5
10
Registration number50 100 150 200
![Page 219: Weapons of mass distraction](https://reader037.vdocuments.us/reader037/viewer/2022103003/55cf0b94bb61eb59748b461d/html5/thumbnails/219.jpg)
So Far• Accounts with
• Patterned profile names
• Patterned usernames
• Patterned emails
• Similar registration times
• Regular inter-registration delays
• Alphabetical progression in usernames
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Disqus lets us map usernames to forums where they’re active
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Disqus also lets us map usernames to comments*
*Including “Private” profiles
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So Far• Accounts with
• Patterned profile names
• Patterned usernames
• Patterned emails
• Similar registration times
• Regular inter-registration delays
• Alphabetical progression in usernames
• And
• Active on the same set of sites
• Shared duplicate comments across accounts
• Vote for each other’s comments to push them up
a
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Puppet army size 186 confirmed
Period of activity Four months (2014-06-5)
Comments posted 7269
Unique comments 5782 (1487 dups)
Primary targeted forums CNN, Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post
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What are they saying?
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Consistent multi-faceted views• Pro-Palestine
• Anti-Israel
• Anti-ISIS/L
• Writes “We (USA)”, presents as Western
• Anti-Syria
• Anti-Obama
• Pro-Islam (Writes “I am Christian and I know that Christianity is worst religion in the world” :)
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So who is this?
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No idea. Anything is pure speculation.
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Ways out?
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Shut down this puppet army
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Disqus limiting their API. (This would be a bad idea.)
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• Puppetry is very likely happening in other places.
• But without the same amount of data, we can’t tell.
• Disqus’ open data approach is great for identifying these relationships and patterns, and we want to give them shouts for it.
• (But fix the unmask attacks.)
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Summary ?
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Slide 223/225
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• Without exception, all of the UGC sites we have looked at have proven to be fairly trivial to manipulate
• It is clear that this abuse is already taking place on many of them
• Be aware of it;
• Build tools to help deal with it;