Criminal network behind sexy gifs in comments on news media's Instagram posts: experts
Broadcaster NOS noticed a flood of sexy gifs in the comment section of its youth platform’s Instagram posts. According to experts, a cybercrime network is behind these gifs of women in bikinis, aiming to scam users and undermine news media.
“We’re also seeing similar comments on other news channels on Instagram. We asked Meta, the company behind Instagram, whether they knew more about this. But we didn’t get a response. We then called in several security experts to investigate further,” Stef Snakkers of the broadcaster’s youth platform, NOS Stories, said.
They found that all the accounts posting sexy gifs under news media’s posts refer to the same domain, aqulas.me, Joost Gijzel of DataExpert told the broadcaster. “These websites all come from a server in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg.” Gijzel’s research showed that tens of thousands of sites are connected to this server and they can all be traced back to one criminal organization - VexTrio. “The goal is actually to just blackmail you. To download data, phishing. Ultimately, it is one big cybercrime gang.”
Many of the gifs are posted by accounts named some variation of “sweet bunny.” The goal is to entice people to click through to the underlying website, mostly porn sites, said Robert van der Noordaa of Trollrensics, which investigates disinformation and troll networks on social media. “You are often presented with a menu that allows you to download pornographic photos or videos. You are then asked to leave information and pay money for this content.”
According to Gijzel, phishing is not the only goal of these cybercriminals. They are also out to undermine the credibility of news media. “These gifs make you, as a visitor, take the comment section of these news platforms less seriously, and as a result, the news media themselves as well,” he said. “The idea is that it will be less interesting for visitors. The real reactions disappear between the gifs and that makes you less inclined to follow these news accounts.”
“It is a well-known tactic to ensure that people no longer want to interact in the comments of reliable media,” agreed Gwenda Nielen, an expert in the field of online manipulation. “By discouraging users from posting serious reactions to news items with these types of reactions.”
