Bot traffic takes back the web

Just over a year ago we reported that, for the first time in five years, human web traffic had overtaken bot traffic.

It seems, however, that human dominance was short lived. The latest Imperva Incapsula Bot Traffic Report shows that in 2016 the bots were back on top with 51.8 percent of online activity, although it's an increase in good bot activity that has driven the trend.

Good bots now account for 22.9 percent of all activity, up from 19.5 percent in the last report. Feed fetchers were the most active good bot in 2016, responsible for 12.2 percent of all traffic. The majority of their activity can be attributed to usage of mobile apps, reflecting the shift to mobile by human users.

Bad bot activity has fallen slightly, down 0.1 percent, accounting for 28.9 percent of internet traffic last year. Impersonator bots were the most active bad bots for the fifth year in a row. In 2016 they were responsible for 24.3 percent of all traffic on Imperva’s network. Impersonator bots are most commonly used to launch DDoS attacks and the most famous ones of today include Mirai, Nitol and Cyclone.

In 2016 every third website visitor was an attack bot, and 94.2 percent of inspected websites experienced at least one bot attack during the 90 day survey period.

"The implications of this trend are felt by many digital business owners, the majority of whom are facing non-human attackers on a regular basis. Specifically, out of 100,000 domains in this survey, 94.2 percent experienced at least one bot attack over the 90 day period," writes Igal Zeifman, director of marketing at Incapsula, on the company's blog. "Often, these assaults are the result of cybercriminals casting a wide net with automated attacks targeting thousands of domains at a time."

More information is available on the Incapsula site and there's a summary of the findings in the infographic below.

Photo credit: Gunnar Assmy / Shutterstock