Post B5v6JiFMOblHs47XYu by tartley@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) More posts by tartley@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) Post #B5tQiflONLgIAxMXwm by leo@twit.social
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       Well this is concerning.I just suspended 14 Russian LLM generated bot accounts that were created around April 17 on my Mastodon instance, twit.social. Somehow they circumvented manual registration approval. I've turned on Captchas (much as I hate them) for new member requests in the hopes that will stop the bots. They must have discovered a registration bypass bug.Thanks to IFTAS SW-ISAC for noting and reporting the bots.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5tQvR38OOs6J2kNv6 by Viss@mastodon.social
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       @leo this is a pretty big deal. if youre running the stock mastodon code and not something like glitchsoc, this is worth submitting an issue to github about
       
 (DIR) Post #B5tRMObzZ2dKZ2uJkG by andrewh@twit.social
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       @leo is that perhaps the period where your subscription had expired?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5tVPtb5DXzhLhPGgC by ariarhythmic@ohai.social
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       @leo Are existing members allowed to create invites that bypass review?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5th7fYnrlC83IPpPk by god@tlv.cool
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       @leo concerning is an understatement here, Leo.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5tpXml8WSLFXe9GMK by scattapilla@jorts.horse
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       @leo looking at the account in modtools should say the inviter name, just ban them too
       
 (DIR) Post #B5tsWoAc5haXUTI58y by curiously@mastodon.au
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       @leo hey thanks for your work in finding and removing these bots. Much appreciated the horde of admins across the Fediverse do an awesome job keeping this a safe place that's people first. Thank you.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5u0OjWCImT6Nb2yB6 by Oregon_Pacifist@retro-gaiden.com
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       @leo yeah, there was a wave of bots that joined my instance. Enabling Captcha didn’t slow them down at all. The only thing that helped was requiring new accounts to write a reason to join. Haven’t seen a bot since.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5u37kqkOkLRRsFqYi by brothercasas@twit.social
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       @leo thanks for keeping this server safe. 👍
       
 (DIR) Post #B5uBvbKIsYJM1cMJ4i by roryh@twit.social
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       @leo thanks for putting in the effort to keep this instance clean!
       
 (DIR) Post #B5uJIvb0Np7bEGF0d6 by BeeT1123@twit.social
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       @leo ims i had to give a reason to join
       
 (DIR) Post #B5uXy8tXF3bbhpSHGi by nihilistic_capybara@layer8.space
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       @leo aren't traditional capchas kind of a solved problem in machine learning?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5uYTuiJVBAWzVM8HY by evan@cosocial.ca
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       @leo thanks for keeping vigilant, Leo!
       
 (DIR) Post #B5v6JiFMOblHs47XYu by tartley@fosstodon.org
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       @leo for 14 of them, couldn't the owners have just registered/captched them manually?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5vznD9g3N2XbmXcaO by wtfismyip@gnu.gl
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       @leo I enabled server-status to investigate some other issue, but noticed there were a bunch of requests against my Mastodon instance.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5xFfSuXNmeKa9kRSi by apzpins@some.apz.fi
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       @leo Depending on how much effort people are willing to put in it, I wouldn't put it past them to have an actual person doing the registration part and then handing it over to the bots.I observed this on a PHPBB forum I used to administer.
       
 (DIR) Post #B602K3eZNWtEEhcYe8 by Beggarmidas@mastodon.social
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       @leo I monitor & counter russian psyop. Have since 2014.  Can you provide me with any additional details? Like what was the focus or central theme or any associations or common thread? The newest hotness in their operations has shifted recently towards creating whole artificial communities. I expect they're hand crafting some outcroppings across social media in order to make these artificial communities look more diverse & therefore more legitimate appearing.