The increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies has turned social media into a central place where users look for help when they have problems with their crypto wallet or private key. Scammers take advantage of this situation to make money with fake support offerings or to gain access to wallets or keys.

CISPA researcher Dr. Bhupendra Acharya has presented the first large-scale study on how these scams work and provided an end-to-end analysis of the scam operations in X (formerly known as Twitter). He presented his findings at the 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May 2024. The paper is available on the arXiv preprint server.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum are widely gaining acceptance because of their decentralized nature and because they grant anonymity to their users. In order to manage and sell cryptocurrencies, users need so-called crypto wallets, which basically are digital wallets for cryptocurrencies.

The best-known wallets are Metamask, Coinbase and Trust. In order to access these wallets, secret keys are required. Anyone with access to the secret keys can manage or access the crypto wallets. In the event of secret key loss, the crypto wallets remain inaccessible.

“We noticed that, as cryptocurrencies have become more popular, people have also been talking about them on social media. This also includes technical support issues such as wallet inaccess, loss of private key phrases, etc., which attracts fraudsters who fake technical support, effectively impersonating official support,” explains Acharya.

Many people prefer to seek help in a chat group or via a tweet instead of contacting the official support channels of the respective crypto wallet provider directly. “In our study, we uncovered how scammers exploit users in social media to either gain access to crypto wallets or simply ask for payment in return for technical support they are faking,” says Acharya.

On the scammers’ trail with HoneyTweet

In order to investigate how support scams in social media actually work, Acharya developed a tool called HoneyTweet. “HoneyTweet automatically sends out unique tweets with keywords for technical support requests in order to bait scammers,” Acharya explains.

“Scammers offering fake support are contacted via a semi-automated tool to detect the scamming payment methods or the modus operandi of scammers,” he continues. The scammers come up with various fake offers such as the software tool “Zeus,” which they claim will retrieve wallet access, and ask for money as part of the support.

Users were often pivoted to external communication channels during the conversation to avoid scam detection on the original platform. With the aid of HoneyTweet, Acharya and his colleagues baited more than 9,000 scammers within three months and traced them on six social media platforms including PayPal and cryptocurrency addresses, which were used as scamming payment methods.

The most important results of the study

In their study, Acharya and his colleagues were able to show that support scams for crypto wallets are a widespread phenomenon on social media such as X. “We found that social media still has some work to do in order to stop these scams,” Acharya says. “And we also found out that scammers often use several social media platforms for their scam attempts.

“Beyond X, the scammers ask to be contacted via direct messages on Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp and others.”

Basically, the scammers work in chain operations that link several social media platforms. During the scam process, the scammers first try to build trust and later perform social engineering tricks, initiating direct message communication where the actual scams take place.

Upon direct messaging, the potential victim is asked to either release their private key or pay for the “fake” support via the scammer’s provided payment method. By collaborating with PayPal and sharing the detected scam accounts with the payment service provider, the researchers were able to further validate the scam’s financial impact.

Takeaways for businesses and users

“There are two groups that could adopt our recommendations,” Acharya explains. “The first one consists of the involved services, like the crypto wallet providers. They should monitor all activity directly associated with their brand name and take action if scammers attempt to impersonate their brand. The second group consists of social media like X, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and others.

“It is important to jointly monitor what is going on in terms of scam chains, because the scam does not necessarily occur on the platform where the chat started out. The final scam might take place at end of the chain, i.e., on another platform. In order to combat those chains, cooperation between the social media services is particularly important.”

Additionally, users of crypto wallets can also take action. Acharya recommends making sure to engage only with official providers of cryptocurrency wallets and be cautious with all unofficial channels. In no case should the information be shared via Google Forms or similar platforms.

“Crypto wallets or social media accounts affiliated with official crypto wallets will never ask their users for their secret keys,” the CISPA researcher concludes.

The future belongs to (secure) digital currencies

Acharya, who during the conversation reveals himself to be a big fan of digital currencies and a cryptocurrency user, sees a lot of potential in cryptocurrencies. “I believe that digital currencies like cryptocurrencies are the next generation of currencies and that they will replace existing currencies in the future,” he is convinced. “However, what we need is a system that is secure enough to create and operate a digital currency.”

As a researcher, he wants to continue contributing to this goal. “One project is using ChatGPT to chat with the scammers based on HoneyTweet,” he explains. “In this context, we also focus on different categories of fraud, such as alleged account recovery.

“In another follow-up study, we will use a deepfake-based method to chat and communicate with the scammers via Zoom video and phone with the aim of identifying further types of fraud mechanisms.”

It will be exciting to see what fraud mechanisms in the area of cryptocurrencies will be uncovered by Acharya and his colleagues.

Provided by
CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security

Researchers have just published their findings on the analysis of economic activities over a century of urban growth in the city of Paris.

The study is published in Nature Cities. The authors are Julie Gravier (Center de Recherches Historiques and Center d’Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales, EHESS) and Marc Barthelemy (Institut de Physique Théorique and Center d’Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales, EHESS).

Understanding the evolution of economic activities alongside the growth of large cities is crucial but challenging, particularly for historical periods where comprehensive data is often unavailable. In this study, the authors leverage a newly released dataset, constructed from city directories, which includes extensive records of individuals, merchants, businesses, organizations, and institutions in Paris from 1829 to 1907.

This dataset contains approximately 1 million entries of economic activities, regularly updated over a span of 79 years, offering a rare historical perspective on urban growth and economic evolution. This period also encompasses significant disruptions, such as the transformative Haussmann’s works (1853–1870) and political upheavals like the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune revolution (1870–1871).

Contemporary research on the dynamics of economic activity in cities typically spans shorter timeframes—ranging from a few years to a few decades. In contrast, the analysis of Barthelemy and Gravier covers nearly a century, providing a deeper understanding of how economic activities evolved during Paris’ expansion.

The authors showed in the case of Paris during the 19th century that not all activities are equivalent and that they can be grouped in categories with different dynamics and scaling. In particular, it seems that some activities naturally accompany the growth of the city and can be considered as intrinsic to its development.

These activities essentially answer to the basic needs of the residents, and the type of scaling with population of the number of these activities depends essentially on their underlying logic: It seems intuitive that the number of food stores scales more or less linearly with population while the number of administrative or educational needs follow an optimization logic (and scale sublinearly).

All these activities constitute the core of the city, while other activities determine its specific features. These quickly developing activities usually respond to some passing fad or to a need of the specific period and the phase of the city’s development.

These findings demonstrate that economic activities scale differently with population and suggest that while some activities are fundamental to a city’s growth, others become prominent during periods of innovation or specialization.

Additionally, Paris’ evolution should be viewed within the broader context of an urban system, as the largest city in France at the time. Urban scaling laws, which help interpret the relationship between city size and economic activity, suggest that activities with scaling exponents greater than 1 represent early stages of innovation adoption, often concentrated in large cities. Conversely, activities with exponents below 1 correspond to more mature, established activities.

The typology presented in the paper likely extends to other growing cities, highlighting how different types of activities contribute uniquely to urban development, depending on the city’s phase of growth or specialization. This analysis provides new insights into the diverse roles of economic activities in shaping the evolution of large cities.

Google on Tuesday said it would halt plans to develop a major $200 million data center in Chile to address environmental concerns, a decision reflecting growing worries about the impact of power-thirsty projects around the world.

The U.S. technology company first obtained permits in 2020 to construct the vast project in Chile’s capital, Santiago, as demand for the server farms skyrocketed across the globe, fueled by a surge in cloud-based technologies and a craze for generative AI.

But months after a Chilean court partially reversed the center’s authorization over water usage concerns, Google announced Tuesday that it would revise the project to comply with more stringent environmental requirements and change its water-intensive cooling system.

“A new process will start from scratch,” Google said in its statement. “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, and the way we design and manage our data centers is no exception.”

Community complaints in the drought-stricken South American nation over the air-conditioned computer farm’s energy and water usage sharpened government scrutiny and prompted a local court to temporarily revoke the project’s authorization in February.

The Santiago environmental court asked Google to respond to concerns that the data center could affect Santiago’s main aquifer.

The court said it was highly possible that cooling the heavy equipment—which creates the online storage for the data of millions—could pull from Chile’s water resources. The country is experiencing a crippling drought supercharged by climate change, a source of outrage among locals and Indigenous groups.

Google didn’t provide an updated timeline for the project and said that it would keep the location the same. It said developers had already notified Chile’s environmental regulator of the company’s decision to pause its permit application process and rethink its strategy.

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On average, we spend three and a quarter hours a day looking at our phones. Cutting back this time by one hour a day is not only good for our mental health, but also helps us to feel happier and more motivated at work.

This was shown in a study of 278 participants conducted by a research group headed by PD Dr. Julia Brailovskaia from the German Center for Mental Health and the Mental Health Research and Treatment Center at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. The researchers published their findings in the journal Acta Psychologica.

The findings of the study are of particular interest to employers, who sometimes invest a lot of money to improve the work satisfaction and motivation of their employees. “These factors are crucial for a company’s productivity,” explains Brailovskaia.

With the current study results, the researchers have identified a simple and low-threshold solution to achieve these goals and to improve the mental health and work-life balance of employees at the same time.

A comparison of four groups

For their study, the researchers assigned the participants, who all came from different professional sectors, to four groups of roughly equal size. The smartphone group reduced their private smartphone use by one hour a day for one week. The sport group increased their daily physical activity by 30 minutes. The combination group did both, and the control group didn’t change their routine at all.

All participants completed online questionnaires before these interventions, immediately afterwards and two weeks after the intervention period ended, providing information about their well-being, both with regard to work and mental health.

Depressive symptoms decreased

In the smartphone group and the combination group, the researchers found that work satisfaction and motivation, work-life balance and mental health had improved significantly. What’s more, the feeling of work overload and symptoms of problematic smartphone use were significantly reduced. All interventions led to a reduction in depressive symptoms and they increased the participants’ sense of control.

“A conscious and controlled reduction of non-work-related screen time, in combination with more physical activity, could improve employees’ work satisfaction and mental health,” concludes Brailovskaia. The researcher believes that these interventions could either complement established training programs or serve as a stand-alone, time- and cost-efficient, low-threshold program.