Researchers create Social Engineering IRC Bot

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers of the Vienna University of Technology developed an IRC bot that acts as a "Man in the middle" between two unsuspecting users, modifies URLs passed between them and also is capable of steering the direction the conversation goes. Not only this works surprisingly well on IRC — 76,1% click rate at maximum — also 4 out of 10 persons clicked on links on Facebook Chat after complete strangers befriended them. This would have worked even better if the bot were to clone existing friends profiles and submitting friend requests from those, say researchers.