San Diego State University researchers developed an AI system named GiveawayScamHunter to detect and expose free cryptocurrency giveaway scams on the X (formerly Twitter) social network. Between June 2022 and June 2023, the system found 95,111 scam lists created from 87,617 X accounts. It autonomously extracted scam-related website and wallet addresses, leading to the identification of 327 scam domains and 121 new scam-related cryptocurrency wallet addresses.
The researchers initially recognized a new attack vector for such scams: Twitter Lists. Leveraging natural language processing, they trained a tool on previous scam data to identify giveaway scam lists. This method uncovered almost 100,000 instances of giveaway scam lists, revealing insights into the scams’ mechanics, victim targeting, and the estimated number of victims and financial losses.
Their findings indicated that over 365 victims fell prey to these scams, resulting in an estimated financial loss of $872,000. The researchers reported their discoveries to both X and the cryptocurrency/blockchain community. As of August 10, some associated accounts (43.9%) remain active, but many are likely inactive spam accounts.
By FCCT Editorial Team
