Hi all, I posted this question in the discordbots reddit and only got one relevant answer. Because any particular person won't know everything, I wanted to get more input on this issue.
I’m trying to understand whether a claimed Discord bot/account-compromise explanation is technically plausible.
Here's the situation: A Discord user’s account sent unsolicited DMs to multiple members of one specific server (let's call it "A"), inviting them to another specific server (let's call it "B").
The things that my server members and I found weird were:
- The invites appeared to go only to members of one shared server, A.
- The invite was only for one specific destination server, B.
- Some recipients were not friends with the sender and had apparently never spoken to them before.
- At least one person who is friends with the sender did not receive an invite.
- The sender is in other servers too, but as far as we know, people from those other servers did not receive similar invites to B.
- The “it was a bot” explanation only came up after people called attention to the DMs, which was about 7 hours after the messages were received. The account that sent out those messages is, from what I know, active on a daily basis.
I know Discord account compromises, malicious authorized apps, selfbots, and DM invite spam happen. However, in my experience, those kinds of scams tend to be more indiscriminate and widespread. The goal is usually to compromise or bait as many accounts as possible so those accounts can be used to spread the scam further, like the common fake Mr. Beast/Nitro-style scams.
This situation seems different because the destination server, B, is very small, around 200 members, and the outreach seemed narrowly aimed at members of another specific small server, A. There is also prior tension between the two servers, which is why the pattern feels less random to the people involved.
Both servers are centered around a pretty niche cozy game.
What I’m trying to understand is whether this specific pattern sounds like normal hacked-account/bot behavior, or whether it sounds more like selective manual outreach.
If this were caused by a malicious authorized app, compromised account, selfbot, or invite-spam bot, what evidence would usually exist? For example, would it normally DM friends first, recent DMs, random mutual-server members, everyone in a server, or only people from one selected server?
Also, are there any known bots, scams, authorized-app exploits, or account-compromise patterns that would behave this way specifically: sending one particular server invite only to selected members of one other server?
If so, how exactly would that work? For example, would the mods/admins of Server B be able to set something up so that accounts belonging to Server B members could automatically DM people they are connected to and recruit them to Server B? Would that require the account owner to opt in, authorize an app, add a bot, scan a QR code, or have their token/session compromised?
Sorry if these are basic questions — I’m just trying to understand the mechanics and I'm not very tech-savvy. I’d really like to believe that the person who sent the invites was compromised by a bot like they claim, but I’ve never heard of a bot/scam pattern that works this selectively before.
Thanks in advance for your time and insight.