Identifying Inauthentic Behavior & Financially Motivated Scams on Social Media | Assaf Kipnis (ex- Facebook / Meta)Pt. 2

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In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse is joined once again by Assaf Kipnis, former Engineering Manager for Integrity Investigations at Meta (previously Facebook). For the 2nd half of this informative conversation, Assaf provides examples of how his team studied & identified the TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) of some of the most complex & pervasion threats to integrity he & his team discovered & dismantled over the last several years of his career. -

Within this episode, Assaf particularly focuses on two of the most innovative threat tactics targeting legitimate users that his team dealt with: Inauthentic Behavior & Financially motivated scams. Some of the topics discussed include:

• How identifying the motivation & behavior of two schemes that may, on the surface seem similar is critical to get to the root cause & ban the behavior in the future; example: "mis-" or "dis-information" versus "inauthentic behavior". While these terms are often generalized as the former, when it comes to eradicating the behavior, the details of the differences are critically important
• The potential financial & reputational damage of "inauthentic behavior", and how focusing on behavior versus content is key when identifying coordinated attacks
• Slight detour to discuss the privilege of having an in-house engineering team for integrity investigations, some tips for what to do if these types of issues can't be solved in-house, the importance of "babysitting" machine learning, and a few cautionary tips when considering new partners for 3rd party detection
• The most pervasive & impactful financially motivated scams targeting social media platforms & users including "pig-butchering" (crypto scams that often target western citizens; typically originating in SE Asia), investment scams, and impersonation scams; how understanding the role & perspective that social media companies have on this behavior can be helpful in identifying the same attackers manipulating multiple systems for one overall crime

This conversation is incredibly fascinating! Especially if you've ever wondered how complex, yet sophisticated the Trust & Safety team at Meta needs to be to stay on the frontlines of identifying new attacks no one has seen before.

To connect with Assaf Kipnis directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/assafkipnis/

Links to Additional Information Mentioned by Karisse in the Intro:

The "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report" published by Meta in October 2020:

https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Inauthentic-Behavior-Report-October-2020.pdf

Examples of "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" that Assaf's team may have been responsible for detecting & disbanding:

"Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Iran, Russia, Macedonia, and Kosovo"; Released March 2019

https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/cib-iran-russia-macedonia-kosovo/

"Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Georgia, Vietnam, and the US"; released December 2019: https://about.fb.com/news/2019/12/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-from-georgia-vietnam-and-the-us/

Fraudology is hosted by Karisse Hendrick, a fraud fighter with decades of experience advising hundreds of the biggest ecommerce companies in the world on fraud, chargebacks, and other forms of abuse impacting a company's bottom line.

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She brings her experience, expertise, and extensive network of experts to this podcast weekly, on Tuesdays.