Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesPractice paper
OTP bots and crypto: A tactic to disrupt
Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal,
6
(3),
275-284
(2023)
Abstract
One-time password (OTP) bots are a form of crimeware-as-a-service that is being used to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) on victim accounts. The bots are operated through Telegram and are sold at various price points in exchange for cryptocurrency. The bot operators facilitate a false phone call to victims, impersonating their financial institution, to obtain their OTP to commit an account takeover. Account takeovers facilitated by this type of social engineering are an enormous threat to financial institutions due to the inability to identify the attack without secondary corroboration. This paper illustrates the typical workflow of an OTP bot, avenues of institutional platform investigation and detection, as well as potential mitigation options to combat OTP bot attacks.
Keywords: otp bots; 2FA; fraud; account takeovers; cryptocurrency
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Kristen Spaeth is a Senior Investigator on the Global Intelligence team at Coinbase, where she works on investigations in coordination with law enforcement to keep criminal activity off the Coinbase platform. Prior to joining Coinbase, she was a Senior Cybercrime Analyst in the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. She has been the investigative lead on numerous complex long-term investigations involving identity theft, money laundering, terrorism financing, bank fraud, network intrusions and enterprise corruption. She holds a MSc in criminal justice from Long Island University, Post Campus.
