Trump Media’s Truth Social Platform Targeted By Fake News Scammers

Phishing is never going to go away; it will continue to evolve, as we’ve seen recently in the likes of the “phish-free” PayPal attack, and the do not click twice attacks against Chrome, Edge and Safari users. However, as threat actors immediately target new Truth Social users, with a newly published report revealing that dozens of scam messages were received within hours of opening an account on the Trump Media social network, the danger of fake news and brand impersonation move front and center when dealing with a platform built on and named after the principle of honesty.

ForbesGoogle ‘Perpetual Hack’ Attack Steals Passwords And 2FA—Act NowBy Davey Winder

Fake News Spins A Dangerous Twist On The Trump Media Truth Social Platform

The Truth Social platform created by Trump Media & Technology Group in 2022, based, as the name suggests, on a principle of honesty, is being used for the complete opposite. Security researchers have revealed how an investigation showed the social media platform being abused “to deploy scams at scale, from phishing websites to investment scams.” The Netcraft research team “received more than 30 messages within hours of creating an account,” a newly published analysis said.

With hundreds of thousands of active daily users, Truth Social is likely to only grow further following President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th President of the United States on Jan. 20. “When a user joins Truth Social, they are prompted to join groups related to areas of interest and topics that users care about,” report author, Penn Mackintosh, said, “and each group member can view a list of all other members.” With some of these groups totaling in excess of 100,000 users, they provide hackers and scammers alike with “a rich source of information to identify and contact other users at scale,” according to Mackintosh. What this means is that it is easy to pick a group and tailor a phishing message to appeal to that particular demographic. With AI-powered phishing attacks now pretty much the norm, not doesn’t take a genius to understand the consequences of such actions.

All social media platforms are used to perpetrate phishing attacks, as are all email platforms, and Truth Social is no different in this regard. However, “because users have opted into these groups,” Mackintosh warned, “people may be less diligent about questioning information because of an existing confirmation bias.”

ForbesFBI Confirms It Deleted Files From 4,258 U.S.-Based ComputersBy Davey Winder

Then there’s the small matter of the platform’s name and the fact that each posting is quite literally called a truth. If users are taking that naming literally themselves, and Mackintosh points to evidence, albeit two years old, that suggests the majority expect the news and information posted there to be mostly accurate, well, you can see the potential problems where it comes to scammers. “With easy access to curated member lists and users more likely to trust Truths,” Mackintosh said, “Truth Social is a prime target for bad actors.”

I have reached out to Truth Social for a statement.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.