Not every click on the internet is caused by a human. Automated bots generated more than 40 percent of all web traffic requests in 2020. The proportion of human outbound internet traffic fell to 59.2 percent. Compared to the previous year, this is a decrease of 5.7 percent, according to Imperva’s Bad Bot Report.
But not all bot is the same. Some serve a useful purpose, such as updating feeds. These good bots account for 15.2 percent of web traffic – an increase of 16 percent.
Meanwhile, the malicious bots caused over a quarter of the Internet traffic – 6.2 percent more than in the previous year. According to Imperva, bad bot traffic reached 25.6 percent in 2020, the highest value since the introduction of the Bad Bot Report in 2014.
According to Imperva, the advanced persistent bots (57.1 percent of bad bot traffic) are a particular problem. These are particularly persistent, difficult-to-track bots that could imitate human behavior.
Bots take advantage of the pandemic
Between September 2020 and February 2021, traffic to healthcare websites generated by malicious bots increased 372 percent. As vaccines became available to more and more age groups in the US, bot activity increased by 25,000 requests per hour, as Imperva writes.
In this way, the bots can paralyze online services by clogging bandwidth. But even before a service fails, the bots make it more difficult for authorized users to access the vaccination scheduling tools, for example.
So-called scalper bots are another problem. These are used to buy limited edition goods. During the pandemic, scalper bots bought large quantities of face masks, disinfectants, detergents and exercise bikes.
The Christmas season was probably pissed off for some by scalper bots. Just in time for the pre-order dates for the new game consoles, bots plagued the gaming market. According to Imperva, it was therefore impossible for many gamers to buy game consoles or GPUs and CPUs online. Imperva therefore also calls them Grinch bots.
Good bots can also be harmful
“Malicious bots must be a top focus for businesses and security professionals in 2021 as the problem continues to grow,” said Edward Roberts, director of strategy, application security, Imperva. “Businesses need to take proactive steps to protect their websites, applications and APIs from these threats as bots become increasingly involved in fraudulent activities that can damage reputations and financial damage.”
It should be noted that even good bots do not only do good. When a website is flooded with bot traffic, good or bad, it slows the performance of the website or web service and makes it difficult for normal users to access. In addition, bots could distort web analyzes. Some sites would seem more popular than they actually are. This in turn would lead to poorer results for advertisers.
Interested parties can read the full report here read – Name and email address required.
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