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Coordinated Community Response Mitigates Fediverse Spam Attack

Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash On October 8, 2024, an IFTAS Connect member observed one of the first spam posts from a network attack conducted by what appeared to be a reuse of the same &#822…

Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash On October 8, 2024, an IFTAS Connect member observed one of the first spam posts from a network attack conducted by what appeared to be a reuse of the same “nuke” script we saw earlier this year in February, a simple but effective tool to create new accounts in bulk, and use those new accounts to deliver unsolicited messages in an infinite loop. In short, a Discord bot was created that can automate the creation of a new account on an open registration service and then repeatedly spam a new post with ten direct mentions, causing notifications to pop up for hundreds of thousands of Fediverse users, which -thanks to network bridges and unmanaged group functionality – included Bluesky accounts and Friendica groups that automatically boost the posts to potentially thousands more individuals. Within the hour, server operators began responding to the alerts and closing down registration, deleting the relevant accounts, and wiping the spam content.

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