#botnet botnetting botnets like it

[beonthelookoutforbotnetsusa]

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BOTNETS USA

[anonforlackofabettername]

If you send me asks about a fundraiser I will delete it and block you. I do not want gofundme links in my inbox. I do not want to be asked for money by strangers first thing in the morning. I get that it is exhausting and dehumanizing to be in the situations that require people to ask for help on the internet but coming into my inbox to ask me directly is crossing so many boundaries. It is incredibly emotionally manipulative. Don't fucking do it. I'm going to continue blocking everyone who does.

edit: adding it to my blog bio because seriously STOP 🛑

[knuffeltrein]

I gave into the curiosity of wanting to know what video the link leads to and

Porn bot says trans rights, I guess?

Pacing back and forth solemnly considering this offer

[wat3rm370n]

Brazilian troll farm operator explains his biz.

BBC Trending (podcast) - Brazil’s real life trolls - Sun 23 Apr 2023 "Trolls are necessary and I'm going to explain why. We have a troll farm. A lot of them. What we don't use are bots. Bots are different things. you can buy it in India and they give you 10,000 likes in a second. That doesn't work because it's not legitimate. What we do, for example with trolls, is to generate some kind of relevance within the social network's algorithms. They have become very rigid about what they show and what they don't. And that has to do with the relevance of the publication. So what trolls do is give relevance to a certain publication. Good publicity, so that it can be shown more than other publications."

[horizonboundtrainer]

Quantum computing was figured out decades ago so even May's shitty old brick of a Pokedex is running on both qubits and binary. And any antivirus program that ain't prepared to deal sentient malware might as well be an open door for malicious actors. A mediocre script kiddy like her could take out all of Silicon Valley on a whim.

[shepherds-of-haven]

Hi. The link to the public demo update doesn't work :/.

Hi. It looks like the entire site for itch.io is currently down, which unfortunately isn't something I can control! Hopefully it will come back soon--these outages don't tend to last too long! Thanks for your patience until then! Edit: Seems like the site was attacked by whatever a botnet is, which is unfortunate timing! Hopefully they can resolve it soon!

[triviallytrue]

What is the current best guess as to how likely/unlikely it is for verified fundraisers to be scams?

Hoo boy. If I had a good guess for that, this would all be much easier.

There are a lot of different people/groups who have at one point or another done some form of verification, many of which do not publicize their methods (often because they don't want scammers to be able to get around them more easily, but still, that makes it tough to accept). Each different person/group may have different standards of evidence and different willingness to verify a fundraiser.

I have spent several hours going through around a dozen fundraisers. I will not be publicizing which ones or what my conclusions are, because getting any kind of certainty with this kind of thing is very, very difficult, and I don't want to get it wrong (in either direction). Some challenges:

Many people have an instagram or tiktok which clearly shows a Palestinian person living in Gaza with a history prior to October 7th, but this social media account does not link back to either their GFM or their tumblr (both of which were created much more recently). In some cases this is probably innocent, but in others, scammers may search common tags on those sites and quietly assume their identities. I have no idea what the proportion is.

In some cases I can be somewhat confident the Palestinian the GFM is for is real, but the middleman (the westerner in charge of sending the gofundme money to the Palestinian refugee) is a complete ghost, not mentioned anywhere and not googleable, and I have no idea if they are reliable.

In the other direction, there are gofundmes with no socials that feel formulaic, with some other things that concern me (ask patterns that feel like botnet behavior, no demonstrated ability to write in Arabic anywhere), but these are also impossible to dismiss as scams - if you are relying on machine translation to try and get from Arabic to English, you are going to sound somewhat formulaic, and to be a refugee is to lack many of the traditional markers of legitimacy that someone in a more stable situation would have.

So in short - shit's fucked! It sounds like the verifiers know this too, and from a mixture of more Palestinians hearing about tumblr's willingness to donate and scammers smelling blood in the air, it sounds like people are burning out. Many of the existing verifiers are themselves Palestinian refugees, and being a refugee puts a huge amount of stress on you in a way that makes it very hard to maintain a verification workload. As I've said before, this kind of thing is a full time job.

If someone reading this would strongly prefer to donate to an individual over an established organization, I would recommend the paypal linked in 90-ghost's bio.

90-ghost seems like as confident as I can be that someone is who they say they are - he has a long history on this site posting about Palestine in Arabic prior to October 7th, other Palestinian users on this site seem to trust him, and the PayPal he links (his brother's, not his) is someone he knows personally and doesn't have a middleman between his family and the money.

Remember: don't just click that link! Before you send anyone money, double check my work - go to his blog and verify that I linked the correct PayPal and that the things I just said are true.

[tinyshootingstar]

Meet the OC - Sinesi Aclyda

Family:

Aglaia Ballisto (Mother) Sideri Aclyda (Father) Chrisante Aclyda (Older sister)

Other names:

Rubecula (Hacking community) Betta (Floyd) Reine des papillons (Rook)

Personality:

A carefree and coquettish girl, with an omnipresent smile of who knows better than you. She may carry herself with an air of superiority, but a bit of flattery is all it takes to win her over.

All her problems are hers alone and, for that reason, she tend to keep others out of them. Seeing her open up to someone is a rare sight, very few people can say they've seen her vulnerable side. Her strong and resolute nature allowed her to fight one of the deepest sorrow she ever felt, but she risked being overwhelmed by it on several occasions. Among all her friends, Vil Schoenheit seems to have the best influence on her. Despite he often claiming he hate her innate passion for lowbrow cinema, he's always there to bring her back down to earth, perhaps the only one truly capable of making her question her choices and pushing her to take a step back. She's quick to anger and when someone is asking her for help, she's always answering in an annoyed tone, but she ends up helping out, even if she sulks the whole time. Just flattering her ability is enough to soften her up. Both with friends or strangers, she's a very frank girl, but her manner may be a little unfriendly or caustic. Moreover, she's a very resentful person, and everyone at school knows this side of her: if someone wrongs her, it's a bit difficult that she'll let it go, and she'll do whatever it takes to get even.

Signature spell:

"Come and serve me well. Who's in control?" In a botnet, allow her to replace the main terminal, physically becoming the botmaster of the network. The larger the network, the more energy she consumes and less time she has. Since botnets are often very large, she has no more than five minutes.

Trivia:

Sinesi's name comes from the greek word σύνεσις, meaning 'understanding', 'unification', 'insight'.

Her surname, Aclyda, comes from the greek word ἀχλύς achlýs, meaning 'obfuscate', in reference to her irascible nature.

She's a promising engineer, but she's dyscalculic. When she was younger, she wanted to surrender at the idea that she would never be a technomantic engineer, but Theia, her sister's girlfriend, pushed her to continue her studies. Now, her goal is to be the best in her field of research, so she can make her proud and repay her for all the kindness and support she’s given.

Since she's slower than her classmates at programming, she wrote a handbook with all the problems she’s already encountered and various precompiled programs ready for use, so she can review them and complete her tasks more quickly.

After the chaos she did during her first year and after spoken with the ARU, they're watching over her devices to monitoring her behaviour online for the time being, a security precaution. Meanwhile, also their cybercrime department put an eye on her...

She has a fondness for shooter, hack-and-slash and horror games. She often play with Idia, who always push her to try some RPGs. She really don't like them, with the exception of one, single game he maneged to make her like.

She's holding a podcast for the film research club with her club's companions. They have fun talking about B and Z movies, mostly horror, but they also promote their main work done under the guidance of Vil. It's a compromise she did with him.

When she's angry, all her magic run through her robotic butterflies and devices, causing multiple glitch and error that she must repair all the times.

To scary the Ignihyde freshmen, she's developed an hologram of a frightening demon coming from a story written by her friend Adana. They named it Larry, and now "he's infesting the second floor of Ignihyde". Idia's backing her up.

When their ex dormleader wanted her to be the new housewardern, she declined. Now, despite idia not appointed her as his vice, most of the dormitory see her like their vicehousewarden.

At first, she was sorted in Pomefiore, but choose to change dorm after the first semester.

My character's masterlist!

[hacked-by-jake]

(does anyone remember my jake-jokes series?)

Jake: MC?

MC: Yes, Jake?

Jake: *giggling*

MC: No! Jake no!

Jake: Please! This one is fantastic, trust me. Let me tell you.. You love me, don’t you?

MC: Fine, if it makes you happy, tell me your new joke.

Jake: Oh, it's not new, it's-

MC: Yeah, I know. But new to me. Just do it.

Jake: Alright *takes a deep breath*

Jake: What’s the best way to catch a runaway robot?

MC: *sighing* I don't know. How?

Jake: *tries desperately to suppress his laughter while sounding like a seal*

Jake: Use a botnet. *bursts into laughter*

Jake: You got it? Roboter and bot and net. *tearing up*

MC: You know what... sometimes you're a real Script Kiddie

Jake: YOU TAKE THAT BACK!

[tweakwitty]

DATABRAWL FANS WHERE YALL AT 🗣️🗣️🗣️‼️‼️‼️ (Lowk Forgot about this game after last playing it in like 2019 pls)

anyways these are my 2 ocsss, Trivia and Botnet (yes they are lovers)

They both used to be in the malware and virus army but now they just chill in the mega bites restaurant

[jbirdoftheriverlands]

I like technology.

somebody mentions a dimmable light bulb and amish tumblr gets all " THAT IS AN IOT DEVICE!! hackers can make botnets out of that!!!! DISPOSE OF IT IMMEDIATELY. Put it in the blender, find the SoC, deepfry it in a NONSEED BASED OIL OMFG GOD YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS and bury it for a full lunar cycle in a churchyard that has never had a child born out of wedlock among its congregation. At the end, exhume it, have it exorcized by a QUALIFIED priest and bury it in a cemetary. go home without looking back and PRAY the hackers can't jerk off while listening to you take PRIVATE loud shits. we all need to do better guys"

rather than

"hehe omg there's bootstrap code. I can have a lil mini botnet in my house" and I think that's a real shame

[the-pen-pot]

TL;DR Report this stuff as SPAM or tags get over-run.

---

So bots are turning up in my tags again. This time thought it's not explicit nudity it's just, you know, dubious tag spam like:

You can report it specifically as spam using the meatball menu (and you should) because otherwise these assholes take over a tag and it's ridiculous.

Tag spam is defined pretty much as any irrelevant tag used in an effort to boost post visibility. These bots use botnets to like the post, therefore pushing it to the top of the tag.

Don't report posts like this as sexually explicit, because technically they're not.

[mariacallous]

One thing that the confused response to Russians at War makes clear is that eight years after the revelation that Moscow attempted to influence a U.S. presidential election, most Westerners still don’t really know how Russian propaganda campaigns work. Americans have become familiar with AI botnets, salaried trolls tweeting in broken English about Texas secession, deranged Russian TV hosts calling for a nuclear strike on New York, and alt-right has-beens. But what to make of a French and Canadian documentary, tucked between Pharrell’s Lego-animated film and a Q&A with Zoe Saldaña, that seems cozy with the Russian military and blurs the line between entertainment and politics?

...

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian propaganda has churned out absurd and repulsive lies, such as that Ukraine has biolabs where NATO scientists are working on a virus that targets Slavic DNA, and that Zelensky, who is Jewish, presides over a neo-Nazi regime. Yet, in a way, it has become honest with itself—at least for the domestic audience. There’s no longer a need for platforms like Russia.ru or The Journal, because the message is clear: This is who we are, and you’re either with us or against us. And yet, the entertainment aspect didn’t disappear.

...

One reason Russian propaganda is running circles around the West is that the internet was one of the few domains where the Russian state arrived late, forcing it to co-opt those who understood it. RuNet, the Russian segment of the World Wide Web, was created—and run—by people like Rykov: artsy 20-somethings, filled with cynicism, post-Soviet disillusionment, and a cyberpunk mentality. The collapse of the Soviet Union taught them that truth was whatever they wanted it to be, and that survival was the ultimate goal. The advertising executives, philosophy students, and creatives who once made video art, lewd calendars, and scandalous zines are the same minds who in 2016 said, “Let’s make memes about Hillary Clinton,” and in 2024 suggested using AI to flood X with believable comments. In many ways, this confrontation mirrors what’s happening in Ukraine: This time, however, the West is the massive, unwieldy force being outsmarted by a smaller, more tech-savvy adversary.

The good news is that the Kremlin is a graveyard of talent. In time, every gifted person I knew who went behind its brick walls was devoured by deceit, paranoia, and fear of losing one’s place in the sun. Konstantin Rykov was exceptional at his job, so much so that the Kremlin offered him a seat in the Russian Parliament when he was just 28. He accepted the offer. But being a member of the Duma Committee on Science and High Technologies and the Committee for Support in the Field of Electronic Media wasn’t the same as being the editor of fuck.ru. Despite being involved in some foreign influence operations, Rykov, now 45, hasn’t produced any significant work for Russian audiences since he joined Parliament.

Asked by an audience member in Toronto whether Russia was responsible for the war in Ukraine, Trofimova replied, “I think there are a lot of other factors involved. Yeah, like they are definitely sending troops in to solve whatever grievances there are.” Even if it wasn’t financed by Moscow, Russians at War reminds me of a Rykov production: slick, scandalous, and with a ton of free press. The message the film conveys is that war, not the country that started it, is bad in this scenario. Trofimova seems to portray Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the astonishing scale of the atrocities it has committed there, as something impersonal and inexorable, like a tsunami: We can only accept it and sympathize with the victims, including Russian soldiers.

[autolenaphilia]

I keep being aghast at people still using old unsupported versions of Windows. Like these people were angery at Valve announcing they would stopping supporting Steam on Windows 7 and 8. And like there is a lot to be angry at Valve for, lootboxes in Counter Strike and so on, but this???

Steam not supporting Windows 7 and 8 is because Microsoft has stopped supporting those operating systems. And you shouldn't be using unsupported operating systems, at least if you are going to connect them to the internet (which is a requirement for Steam).

Windows, like any operating system, is very complex, and there are inevitably going to be security flaws, holes in the system that malware and malicious actors are going to exploit. And a major part of support is the developers, Microsoft in the case of Windows, fixing those security flaws with security updates as they are discovered. When the devs stop supporting an operating system, any remaining security holes in the system will not be fixed, and they will inevitably still be some left, because again any operating system is super-complex.

So if you keep using an operating system that is unsupported, and connect that machine to the internet, you are going to become a prime target for any hackers out there, who will exploit those remaining security holes to infect you with ransomware, or turn your computer into part of a botnet, or exploit it for cryptomining.

(you can use old versions of Windows, but only safely if that machine has no internet access. Such machines are both used professionally to run old software that is useful, but has no real replacement, and by video game hobbyists to run old Windows games off disks. That is not a problem, it becomes one if that machine has internet access)

Now I don't expect Microsoft to support all versions of Windows forever, no creator of software practically can do that, so no one does.

Although Microsoft is partly at fault here. They habitually raise the system requirements for new versions of Windows to ludicrous heights, making their users unable to update their computers despite their computer still working fine. This has resulted in the less wealthy parts of the world still being stuck on unsupported Windows versions. The majority of Armenian computers still run Windows XP, just for example.

And they often make these new Windows worse than the old ones, ranging from needless changes to the UI to invasions of privacy.

And Microsoft are partially to blame for instilling a kind of technological learned helplessness into their users, in order to control them. By hiding information and wrestling control from their users, Microsoft has taught them that they are unable to learn and change and control their digital life.

I think that explains the phenomenon of people who use old versions of Windows. They often can't update their computers to new versions of Windows because of unreasonable system requirements, or understandably don't want to use Windows 10 or 11. And because Microsoft has systematically treated them as unable to learn or take responsibility for their computer, they haven't learned what End of Life (EOL) for an operating system means. And for the same reason, the users feel that doing something like installing another operating system, like a Linux distro that is still supported and would run on their old computer, as something beyond their grasp.

Yet it is absolutely what they should do, and it is not as hard as you might think it is. There are real, sensible reasons to not use LInux, but if the contest is on a computer connected to internet, between old unsupported versions of Windows and Linux, Linux is absolutely the better option. The massive security risk of using an unsupported Windows version is far worse than any drawbacks of switching to Linux. Like it's beyond debate, the contest is between installing a Linux distro and your computer becoming part of a botnet at that point.

And the problem of existing computers being unable to update to supported versions of Windows will only get worse. The jump in system requirements from Windows 10 to 11 might be the worst one since XP to Vista. Windows 10 is supported for now, but support will end in October 2025, less than two years from now. And the percentage of Windows 10 computers that can't update to Win11? 55% if you are being optimistic, more than 75% if you are not.

And because Linux is not seen as an option by the majority, 2025 will mean massive amounts of e-waste as those who have money will dispose of old working computers to buy new ones, and a lot of people who can't afford new computers continuing to use the now unsupported Windows 10. 2025 will not be the year of the Linux desktop, but things will continue to suck because of it.

[hungwy]

real hungwyheads remember when i thought i was being targeted by like some anon ask botnet because it was so consistent and longterm

[allthegeopolitics]

An international law enforcement team has arrested a Chinese national and disrupted a major botnet that officials said he ran for nearly a decade, amassing at least US$99 million in profits by reselling access to criminals who used it for identity theft, child exploitation, and financial fraud, including pandemic relief scams. The U.S. Department of Justice quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray as saying Wednesday that the "911 S5" botnet -- a network of malware-infected computers in nearly 200 countries -- was likely the world's largest. Justice said in a news release that Yunhe Wang, 35, was arrested May 24. Wang was arrested in Singapore, and search warrants were executed there and in Thailand, the FBI's deputy assistant director for cyber operations, Brett Leatherman, said in a LinkedIn post. Authorities also seized $29 million in cryptocurrency, Leatherman said.

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