90 percent of security events are caused by bots

Bots account for 49 percent of all internet traffic, most of which is from malicious 'bad bots' according to website security company Incapsula.

Of course there are good bots too, such as the crawlers used by major search engines, but according to Incapsula’s figures 90 percent of all security events are caused by bots, and 66 percent of all bot activity is malicious.

It splits bad bots into four categories, The Impersonator -- which poses as a regular visitor to spy on, steal from or bring down a website. The Hacker -- which seeks to steal valuable data (such as credit card or customer information) from a site, infect it with malware or even hijack the site or server. The Thief -- is a scraper bot that harvests content and reposts it on other websites, reverse-engineers pricing or business models, or steals email addresses for spam email lists. And finally The Lure -- a spam bot posting phishing links that lure visitors away from a site, and uses malware or black hat SEO techniques that lead search engines to blacklist a legitimate site.

Bot attacks mainly come from China, with one in three originating there, but the United States is the main target, with 50 percent attacking organizations in the US.

More details of the findings can be found on the Incapsula blog and in the infographic below.