AkiraBot network hits thousands of sites with CAPTCHA bypassing AI spam

Date:
Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:30:00 +0000

Description:
Tens of thousands of websites were served spam messages in chat, comment sections, and more.

FULL STORY

A major spam campaign leveraging ChatGPT targeted more than 400,000 websites and successfully spammed 80,000, even working around CAPTCHA filters to advertise shady services.

This is according to cybersecurity researchers SentinelOne, who discovered
the campaign and recently wrote an in-depth report about it.

As per the report, at the center of the campaign is a platform called
AkiraBot that targets website chats, comment sections, and contact forms. It
is not related to the ransomware operation of the same name.

Cracking CAPTCHA

It is a Python-based framework which uses an OpenAI API to create spam
contents related to the general purpose of the website being targeted. The
goal of the campaign is to advertise two dubious search engine optimization (SEO) services, called Akira and ServicewrapGO.

What makes this spam campaign stand out is the way it works around CAPTCHA
spam filters.

The bot creator has invested significant effort into evading CAPTCHA filters
as well as avoiding network detections by relying on a proxy service
generally marketed towards advertisersthough the service has had considerable interest and use by cybercriminal actors, the researchers said in their
report.

To bypass CAPTCHA, the bot uses fake web browsers that mimic a real persons browser behavior. It does this using a tool called Selenium, which is capable of opening websites and clicking around.

Since websites can usually spot fake browsers (by hunting for clues such as missing fonts, mismatched browser info, etc.), the bot injects special code (inject.js) into the website as it loads. This code tweaks how the fake
browser looks, making it seem more human.

If this browser trick still doesnt fool the CAPTCHA, the bot then uses
external CAPTCHA-solving services (like Capsolver) to crack it. It even
targets chat systems on websites (like Reamaze) to refresh tokens and keep spamming undetected.

SentinelOne believes AkiraBot has been in use since at least September 2024, targeting GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace, and other websites.

According to The Hacker News, OpenAI has disabled the API key and other associated assets the threat actors used, to tackle the threat.

"The author or authors have invested significant effort in this bot's ability to bypass commonly used CAPTCHA technologies, which demonstrates that the operators are motivated to violate service provider protections," the researchers said.

"AkiraBot's use of LLM-generated spam message content demonstrates the
emerging challenges that AI poses to defending websites against spam
attacks."

Via The Hacker News

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/akirabot-network-hits-thousands-of-site s-with-captcha-bypassing-ai-spam

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