You've probably read a headline over the last few weeks that was tied into something happening at the World Economic Forum's big conference in Davos, Switzerland.
Leaders from across the world spoke and so did leaders in business, including the Maersk CEO talking about the company's NotPetya ransomware attack.
Now the Forum is talking about itself, and how it was able to banish bots that were spreading misinformation and malicious links while acting like they were reporting on Davos.
"This January at Davos, we custom-built software to track malicious bots in real time.
The software uses a number of techniques to identify malicious bots, developed through studies carried out in 2013 on the functioning of botnets on social media.
An account that looks suspicious is analysed on several dimensions: how many followers does it have? How many accounts is it following? What is the username, the user’s nickname, name and surname? What's the email attached (if it's public)? What can be gleaned from a small sample of posts?"
The World Economic Forum says it detected hundreds of bad actor bots and it was able to take appropriate actions as a result.
And here's a shocker (this sentence is being written in a sarcastic tone): Some of the bots shared web addresses containing malicious code that would infect visiting computers and use those personal computers to mine cryptocurrency.
It's all about the crypto, isn't it?
Here's the World Economic Forum's report on banishing the bots, if you'd like to read more.