Social media groups devoted to cryptocurrency in Russia are being attacked by bots in what appears to be a campaign against Bitcoin and others. Members of the community have noticed that their comments on Russia’s largest social media platform are triggered by certain keywords such as crypto and blockchain.
In the past week or so, crypto-themed groups on Russia’s state-run social network Vkontakte (VK) have seen an increase in comments attempting to discredit cryptocurrencies and related technologies, crypto news outlets Bits. media and RBC Crypto reported.
The comments appear below posts and linked articles about crypto assets. They are all similar, for example.” Digging into crypto is more expensive and always a big risk,” “Is anyone still talking about Bitcoin?” , “People who buzz about crypto don’t even understand it.”
According to Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at exchange aggregator Bestchange.ru, these bots first appeared on the community and official page of his platform on Vkontakte on February 13. The accounts are typical of such attacks and are merely dormant accounts that were recently registered or stolen.
Bots are often used to spread spam, advertisements, or to draw users into fraudulent schemes, which is not the case here. The messages have no external links and their content is limited to abstract criticism of cryptocurrency, trading, or other activities.
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 moderators “respond quickly to complaints” about bots posting large amounts of the same information.
Zubolev also commented that it is still difficult to establish exactly what the bots are responding to. He observed that they ignore posts containing images, but are activated by posts containing words such as “Binance,” “bitcoin,” and “blockchain.” The attacks have intensified this week, the analyst noted.
Telegram’s crypto channel has not been affected
by bot attacks.
It is difficult to understand the meaning and effect of such campaigns against cryptocurrencies, since most of the Russian-speaking crypto community does not use this social platform, defi banking platform Indefibank’s CEO, Sergey Mendeleev remarked, “for obvious reasons.”
Mendeleev believes that someone ordered the attack so that they could later see “a large amount of negative comments on the most popular social networks.” The expert noted that such an attack was not seen on the crypto channel on Telegram.
Vkontakte was founded in 2006 by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who later launched Telegram messenger.In April 2014, Durov was removed as CEO of VK. He left Russia, suggesting that this was due to his refusal to pass on personal user details to Russian law enforcement, including information on members of groups devoted to the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine.
In September of the same year, the Mail.ru group became the company’s sole owner; in December 2021, Russian state bank Gazprombank and insurance company Sogaz bought 57.3% of VK shares and became the controlling owners; Vkontakte recently launched its NFT service; and in December 2021, the Russian state bank Gazprombank and insurance company Vkontakte became the sole owner of the company.
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