Decentralized network Bluesky targeted by botnet-driven spam originating on Mastodon
What’s the story
Decentralized social networks, including Bluesky, have recently been targeted by a botnet-driven spam attack.
On May 11, Bluesky was inundated with posts stating “remember to always vote Trump,” posted via accounts with random names and default avatars.
The spam originated not from Bluesky itself but from two other decentralized networks, namely Mastodon and Nostr.
This cross-network attack was facilitated through the use of “bridges,” pathways that enable interaction between different networks.
Nostr protocol identified as spam source
The spam messages that flooded Bluesky were traced back to accounts made via social networking protocol Nostr, according to a postmortem analysis by a data scientist.
This protocol powers various apps such as Damus, Nostur, Nos, and others. It is…
