AkiraBot network hits thousands of sites with CAPTCHA bypassing AI spam

• SentinelOne found a new spam framework called AkiraBot
• It can bypass CAPTCHA filters and generates spam using OpenAI API
• More than 80,000 sites were successfully spammed

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.

Cybersecurity researchers SentinelOne discovered the campaign and reported how at the center of the campaign is a platform called AkiraBot that targets website chats, comment sections, and contact forms.

Fortunately, it is not related to the ransomware operation of the same name, but is a Python-based framework which uses an OpenAI API to create spam contents related to the general purpose of the website being targeted.

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Cracking CAPTCHA

The goal of the campaign is to advertise two dubious search engine optimization (SEO) services, called Akira and ServicewrapGO - but 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 advertisers–though 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 person’s 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 doesn’t 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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