Bot Development for Social Engineering Attacks on Twitter

TL;DR

This study developed Twitter bots to simulate social engineering attacks, collecting user response data over a month, revealing that such attacks remain feasible despite Twitter's security measures.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new bot-based methodology for assessing user vulnerability to social engineering on Twitter.

Findings

Feasibility of social engineering attacks on Twitter confirmed

Collected feedback data from 1,287 accounts over 38 days

No conclusive preceptors for unsafe behavior identified

Abstract

A series of bots performing simulated social engineering attacks using phishing in the Twitter platform was developed to identify potentially unsafe user behavior. In this work different bot versions were developed to collect feedback data after stimuli directed to 1,287 twitter accounts for 38 consecutive days. The results were not conclusive about the existence of preceptors for unsafe behavior, but we conclude that despite Twiter's security this kind of attack is still feasible.