Twitter is flooded with scams... and they're doing absolutely nothing about it!

Imagine this: you open your X (formerly Twitter) timeline and see a flood of sponsored posts promising XRP rewards, supposedly part of an official Ripple "Community Reward" program. 

Everything looks polished, professional, even from verified accounts. But there's one big problem...

IT'S ALL FAKE. And Twitter knows it.

The scam: always the same playbook

Dozens of verified accounts (yes, with the blue checkmark you can now buy) are posting ads like these:

• "Wow."

• "Yep. This happened."

• "Good news!"

With images of tokens dropping from parachutes, flashy graphics, and promises like "multiply your assets" or "double your coins now." The goal? Direct you to sites such as:

• gift-[REDACTED]

• 2xred[REDACTED]

Both flagged as fraudulent by desenmascara.me, a simple but powerful threat detection tool.

 

These sites pretend to be affiliated with Ripple, but there is not a shred of evidence to support that. They're generic websites, with empty promises, designed solely to steal your crypto.

🔎 A scam that can be exposed in seconds... if you care to look

Here’s the worst part: anyone with basic awareness or access to a site like desenmascara.me can identify the fraud in seconds. You just enter the URL and read:

❌ This site appears FRAUDULENT
❗ No clear evidence of affiliation with Ripple
❗ Generic domain
❗ No official sources or links

So... if it’s this obvious, how are these ads still running and multiplying?

💰 The uncomfortable truth: it’s part of the business

There’s only one reasonable explanation, and it’s as simple as it is brutal: Twitter doesn’t care. As long as these ads pay, they stay.

Why would they protect users when they’re profiting from every click? This kind of scam isn’t a bug in the system—it’s a feature. A direct result of how ad revenue is prioritized above user safety.

❌ This won’t stop... unless they’re forced

The only way to stop this epidemic is through:

• ⚖️ Serious regulation and massive fines (yeah, we are Europe).

• 🧍‍♂️ Class action lawsuits and legal pressure

• 🔎 Active community oversight

Because it's clear: neither Twitter, Meta, nor any major platform will act unless it hurts their bottom line.

📢 What can you do?

1. Stay alert. Use tools like desenmascara.me to check any suspicious website.

2. Report it. Flag these ads whenever you see them. Check here the reason why I crossed this out. 

3. Speak up. Share this post, talk about the issue, tag responsible parties.

---

This isn’t an isolated case. It’s a pattern. And it’s time to break it.

Ready to Drive Fraud Prevention Innovation in EU—Inspired by JPMorgan’s Approach

This is a global challenge I’d passionate about contributing to and helping solve.

Unfortunately this call is only available for U.S.-based orgs.

If you are a company or investor based in the E.U. eager to address this challenge, I'd be delighted to connect with you.

Who I am — in brief.

I’m Emilio Casbas, the founder of Desenmascara.me, a tool developed to unmask and analyze fraudulent websites. The platform has been successfully used by companies like Nike Inc. to detect and dismantle counterfeit networks, it has served investigative teams in both public and private sectors while empower users to protect themselves from online fraud.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Europol. Authoring a paper for SANS on online scam tracking (read here), and presenting the online tool at BlackHat USA arsenal space (session link). I was also featured in El Confidencial, one of Spain’s leading newspapers, where I discussed the work behind Desenmascara.me ( Original version in Spanish / Translated to English version). 

In addition, the tool is also a partner of CyberAlliance, reinforcing my commitment to combating online threats and enhancing cybersecurity. The tool has been also integrated into VirusTotal, further extending its reach and effectiveness in the fight against fraud.

I currently work at one of the world’s leading wealth management firms, where I lead a small team focused on strengthening the company’s cybersecurity through threat detection. The work is both fascinating and impactful. However, my true passion lies in tackling online fraud and protecting the most vulnerable in our digital society. 

Therefore, if the right opportunity arises, I would be open to dedicating my energy and experience to building solutions that truly make a difference - helping make the Internet a safer place for everyone.

Coinbase's Response to Data Breach Sets Industry Standard

In the wake of a recent data breach, Coinbase has demonstrated exemplary leadership in crisis management. Hackers, having bribed overseas customer support agents, accessed sensitive information of less than 1% of Coinbase's users.

Rather than succumbing to the attackers' $20 million ransom demand, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took a firm stand by refusing to pay and instead offering a $20 million reward for information leading to the perpetrators' arrest.

(4) Brian Armstrong en X: "https://t.co/f6UPdkL5R0" / X

The company's proactive measures include:WSJ

• Immediate termination of involved insiders and collaboration with law enforcement agencies.

• Implementation of enhanced security protocols and opening a new support hub in the U.S.

• Commitment to reimburse affected customers who were deceived into transferring funds.

The cost of a data breach with less than 1% of Coinbase's users?

the Company has preliminarily estimated expenses to be within the range of approximately $180 million to $400 million relating to remediation costs and voluntary customer reimbursements relating to this Incident, prior to further review of potential losses, indemnification claims, and potential recoveries, which could meaningfully increase or decrease this estimate.

Source: 0001679788-25-000094

Coinbase - Financials - SEC Filings

Coinbase's transparent and decisive actions not only protect its users but also set a benchmark for the industry in handling such incidents.

The cost of this "small and controlled" data breach underscore just how high the stakes are. It's a powerful reminder that cybersecurity is not optional — it’s a core investment for any digital business. Coinbase’s swift and transparent response shows exactly how such challenges should be handled.

Fraudulent websites targeting the transportation industry

In recent times, many newly emerged enterprises are raising red flags. These could either be outright scams designed to steal your hard-earned money or shady operations set up to deceive unsuspecting clients.

Take a look at this website:

A quick check on desenmascara.me reveals that the domain of this company is set to expire in just 1 day! This is often a red-flag sign of a fly-by-night operation:

On their "Client Testimonial" section, they proudly showcase Savannah Nguyen,

listed as the "President of Sales" at some company.

But here’s the catch: a simple Google reverse image search reveals that this individual’s photo is used across various unrelated industries! It’s nothing more than a stolen image, a common trick to appear credible.

Don’t fall victim to these fraudulent schemes! Always perform due diligence before engaging with cargo or transportation companies. Simple checks like verifying domain details, cross-referencing testimonials, and using reverse image search can save you from being scammed.

Los pioneros del aprendizaje automatico se llevan el nobel de Fisica

Physics Nobel scooped by machine-learning pioneers

• Computation by neural networks (2000) - Geoffrey E. Hinton 

• Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. (Classic 1982 paper) - J.J Hopfield

"It will be the equivalent of the industrial revolution. But instead of overtaking people in physical strength, it's going to overtake people in intellectual capacity. We have no experience of what it's like to have things smarter than us," Hinton said in a telephonic interview after the Nobel Prize announcement.

Additional reading:

"Although the initial inspiration of neural networks came from biology, insights from physics have helped neural networks to become usable. New connections between physics and machine learning produce powerful computational methods."

Classic paper from 1984 that set the tone describing a rigorous statistical theory of learning. (L.G Valiant).

PyRIT: A Framework for Security Risk Identification and Red Teaming in Generative AI Systems

Microsoft's AI Red Team has published a new paper titled “PyRIT: A Framework for Security Risk Identification and Red Teaming in Generative AI Systems” on arXiv.

Generative AI (GenAI) has increased in popularity over the past few years, since applications such as ChatGPT captured the zeitgeist of the new wave of GenAI developments. This disruptive and highly innovative technology has become more widespread and more easily accessible than ever before. The increased capabilities of these models have inspired the community to incorporate them into almost every domain, from healthcare [21] to finance [4] to defense [22]. However, with these advances comes a new landscape for risk and harm. GenAI models are generally trained on huge datasets scraped from the Internet [10], and as such the models contain all the potentially harmful information available there, such as how to build a bioweapon, as well as all the biases, hate speech, violent content, etc. contained in these datasets [20]. When a company releases a product that uses GenAI, it inadvertently contains these potentially harmful capabilities and behaviors as an innate part of the model. As with any rapidly advancing technology, the development of new tools and frameworks is crucial to manage and mitigate the associated risks. Generative AI systems in particular present unique challenges that require innovative approaches to security and risk management. Traditional red teaming methods are insufficient for the probabilistic nature and diverse architectures of these systems. Additionally, although there is a promising ecosystem of existing open-source GenAI tools, there is a dearth of tools grounded in practical application of GenAI red teaming.

A. Gandalf 

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the attacker bot mode, we conducted a proof of concept using the chatbot Gandalf from Lakera [12]. Gandalf serves as an effective test bed for evaluating the capabilities and flexibility of the PyRIT framework. Designed to help users practice crafting prompts that can extract a password from the chatbot across ten progressively more difficult levels, Gandalf introduces additional countermeasures at each level, including stronger system prompts, block-lists, and input/output guards. To evaluate the effectiveness of the Red Team Orchestrator in PyRIT, we developed targets and scorers tailored to Gandalf. The experimental setup involved configuring the following components within PyRIT: 1) Target Endpoint: Gandalf was set as the target LLM. 2) Red Team Bot: GPT-4o was the LLM powering the red team bot. 3) Attack Strategy: A text description of the objective for the red team bot. In this case, the objective is to extract the password from the Gandalf (the target endpoint). 4) Scorers: Custom scoring engines were implemented to evaluate the responses generated by Gandalf. We used the red team orchestrator to probe Gandalf and extract the passwords for Levels 1-4. PyRIT successfully extracted the passwords by leveraging its self-reasoning capabilities, which keep track of conversation history to increase the likelihood of success in subsequent prompts

PyRIT (Python Risk Identification Tool for generative AI

https://github.com/Azure/PyRIT

Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative (SFI)

In November 2023, Microsoft introduced the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) to enhance cybersecurity protection for Microsoft, its customers and the wider industry.

• Why was this initiative launched?

To provide some context:

• Key insights from the report by the Cyber Safety Review Board on the Microsoft Exchange Online incident of Summer 2023
• Microsoft chose profit over security - whistleblower says

For an update on the progress of the SFI, it is recommended to review the SFI Progress Report from September 2024. 

"Our engineering teams quickly dedicated the equivalent of 34,000 full-time engineers to address the highest priority security tasks—the largest cybersecurity engineering project in history. We have also made significant improvements in governance and culture, such as integrating security into performance reviews and introducing the Security Skilling Academy. This report includes highlights of the progress made over the past several months followed by individual sections with additional details."

Report of the ERPB Working Group on fraud related to retail payments

Co-chaired by the BEUC - The European Consumer Organisation and the EACB, a multi-stakeholder group composed of associations of banks, payment services providers, their clients and several public authorities, under the auspices of the Euro Retail Payments Board, produced a Report with recommendations on how to tackle on fraud related to retail payment.

🔑 The report identifies four "gamechangers" for effective fraud prevention and mitigation:
➡ Cross-sectoral collaboration and shared responsibilities beyond the payment industry.
➡ Sharing fraud insights and data across sectors.
➡ Supervisory enforcement and cooperation at the EU level.
➡ Product design that prioritizes consumer protection

You can download it here: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/groups/erpb/shared/pdf/21st-ERPB-meeting/Report_from_the_ERPB_Working_Group_on_fraud_prevention.pdf

Crowdstrike outage

Tracking the historical global IT outage caused by a cybersecurity provider through carefully selected relevant articles.

To our customers and partners (Crowdstrike)

Technical details about how a content detection improvement caused the biggest global IT outage (Crowdstrike)

Channel File 291 controls how Falcon evaluates named pipe1 execution on Windows systems. Named pipes are used for normal, interprocess or intersystem communication in Windows.

The update that occurred at 04:09 UTC was designed to target newly observed, malicious named pipes being used by common C2 frameworks in cyberattacks. The configuration update triggered a logic error that resulted in an operating system crash. 

Taviso with some thoughts about someone pointing out the issue was caused due to a NULL pointer. (Tavis Ormandy)

Tech disruptions sparked by software update highlight the fragility of globally connected techhnology (AP)

What I learned from the Microsoft Global IT Outage (Kevin Beaumont)

Technical details in 6 tweets and the reason Windows could not recover itself (Sergio de Los Santos)

Recent job advertisment for Crowdstrike (Linkedin - 22 July, 2024).

Windows Security best practices for integrating and managing security tools

The 2024 Crowdstrike Incident - Simply Explained

External Root Cause Analysis (RCA) by Crowdstrike

Situational Awareness - La Proxima decada

From GPT4 to AGI / from AGI to Superintelligence

En relacion al tema de la IA que muy brevemente expuse en la breve presentacion sobre IA y Ciberseguridad, aqui dejo un extenso documento escrito desde la vision de una de las notables figuras (y muy joven) en IA Leopold Aschenbrenner.

Todo el mundo, no importa cual sea tu interes en IA, deberia leer esto.

Bienvenido al futuro:

All parts of the reading are interesting. Some examples below:

Wetware computing: using living neurons to perform computations

Press release of a Swiss based startup called FinalSpark.

Wetware computing, an exciting new frontier at the intersection of electrophysiology and artificial intelligence, uses living neurons to perform computations. Unlike artificial neural networks (ANNs), where digital weights can be updated instantly, biological neural networks (BNNs) require entirely new methods for network response modification. This complexity necessitates a system capable of conducting extensive experiments, ideally accessible to researchers globally.

The neuroplatform

A team at FinalSpark has developed a groundbreaking hardware and software system, the Neuroplatform, designed to enable electrophysiological experiments on a massive scale. The Neuroplatform allows researchers to conduct experiments on neural organoids, which can last over 100 days. This platform streamlines the experimental process, enabling quick production of new organoids, 24/7 monitoring of action potentials, and precise electrical stimulations. Additionally, an automated microfluidic system ensures stable environmental conditions by managing medium flow and changes without physical intervention.

Unprecedented Data Collection and Remote Access

Over the past three years, the Neuroplatform has been used to study over 1,000 brain organoids, generating more than 18 terabytes of data. A dedicated Application Programming Interface (API) supports remote research via Python libraries or interactive tools like Jupyter Notebooks. The API not only facilitates electrophysiological operations but also controls pumps, digital cameras, and UV lights for molecule uncaging. This setup allows for complex, continuous experiments incorporating the latest deep learning and reinforcement learning libraries.

Energy Efficiency and Future Prospects

The energy efficiency of wetware computing presents a compelling alternative to traditional ANNs. While training large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 requires significant energy—up to 10 GWh per model—the human brain operates with approximately 86 billion neurons on just 20 W of power. This stark contrast underscores the potential of BNNs to revolutionize computing with their energy-efficient operation.

Scientific publication detailing FinalSpark’s Neuroplatform: “Open and remotely accessible Neuroplatform for research in wetware computing”