How do you know if you’re dealing with a human or a bot? [Q&A]
If you’ve seen ‘Blade Runner’ you’ll know how difficult it can be to determine if someone is human or not. While that was fiction it’s worth remembering that it was set in 2019.
In 2025 and in the real world it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell humans from bots in the online world. AI-powered bots, nearly indistinguishable from humans, are multiplying rapidly. This presents a growing nightmare for headhunters, security officers and more. We spoke to Terence Kwok, founder and CEO of blockchain identity platform Humanity Protocol, about the challenge of verifying humanity online.
Automated bot attacks surge ahead of US election
Automated bot attacks targeting social media platforms have surged in the lead-up to the US presidential election, with the sector accounting for 28 percent of all attacks in Q3, up from just three percent in Q1.
The latest identity fraud report from AU10TIX shows an increasing industrialization of identity fraud, with bad actors launching automated mega-attacks using thousands of false identities targeting payments, crypto and social media companies all over the world.
95 percent of website bot attacks go undetected
More than 65 percent of websites are unprotected against simple bot attacks and 95 percent of advanced bot attacks go undetected on websites.
A new report from DataDome reveals that eCommerce and luxury goods sites are at greatest risk. Just five percent of luxury brand websites and 10 percent of eCommerce websites are fully protected against bad bots.
Businesses losing revenue to bot attacks
A new report reveals that 98 percent of organizations attacked by bots in the past year have lost revenue as a result.
The latest State of Bot Mitigation Report from Kasada, based on a survey of over 220 US tech professionals, also shows that despite investing heavily in bot defenses, most solutions are proving to be ineffective. Just one in five say that after initial deployment their bot mitigation solution retained effectiveness for more than 12 months.
Bots account for half of all web traffic
A new report from Imperva finds that 49.6 percent of all internet traffic came from bots in 2023, a two percent increase over the previous year, and the highest level since the company began monitoring automated traffic in 2013.
The proportion of web traffic associated with bad bots grew to 32 percent in 2023, up from 30.2 percent in 2022, while traffic from human users decreased to 50.4 percent. Automated traffic is costing organizations billions of dollars annually due to attacks on websites, APIs, and applications.
Fake web traffic gets more sophisticated
Bots have been around for a long time, but they're now much more sophisticated, capable of mimicking human behavior, evading detection, and perpetrating a wide range of malicious activities.
A new report from CHEQ shows that latest bots are able to scrape data without permission, inflate engagement metrics, commit fraud, and compromise the security and integrity of websites, mobile apps, and APIs.
Bad bots try to be more human
Bad bots are designed perform various malicious activities. These range from basic scrapers that try to get some data off an application -- and are easily blocked -- to more advanced persistent bots that try to evade detection.
Barracuda researchers have been tracking bots for several years and have identified some interesting recent trends not least that, like King Louie in The Jungle Book, they 'wanna be like you'.
Why bad bots and open banking are creating opportunities for cybercriminals [Q&A]
We all know that bad bots are, well… Bad. But open banking is supposed to be good, giving consumers more control over their finances. Combine open banking and bad bots though and you have opened up a world of new threats to banks, customers, and their data.
We spoke to Alan Ryan, AVP for UK and Ireland at Imperva, about how open banking has created new opportunities for cybercriminals, and why the traditional siloed approach to security needs re-appraising.
Businesses losing revenue to bot-driven account fraud
Revenue loss from bot-driven account fraud and web scraping continues to increase according to a new report, with 69 percent of companies that have a bot management solution report losing more than six percent of their revenue due to account fraud this year.
Account fraud includes account takeovers and new account fraud, where fraudsters create fake accounts to gain access to loyalty programs and take advantage of promotional discounts.
Bots-as-a-service and why they might interest shoppers [Q&A]
Bots tend to have a poor reputation, launching cyber attacks, beating you to the best bargains on eCommerce sites and generally being a bit of a pain in the Net.
Nowadays bots are frequently available 'as-a-service' so it's possible to rent one for a period of time to execute an attack. But, according to research for Cequence Security, 32 percent of respondents say they've used a shopping bot before and 38 percent say they might in the future. So that's 70 percent of people who are thinking, 'If you can't beat them, join them.'
Malicious bot traffic hits new highs
New data from Imperva Research Labs sees the highest percentage of bad bot traffic (25.6 percent) since the company began reporting traffic in 2014.
At the same time traffic from humans fell by 5.7 percent. More than 40 percent of all web traffic requests originated from a bot last year, suggesting the growing scale and widespread impact of bots in daily life.
The rise of the shopping bot and what it means for security teams [Q&A]
If you've ever tried to order a recently released tech product, like a new game console or the latest hot graphics card only to find it's sold out, you've no doubt felt frustrated. It's even more frustrating when the product then appears on secondary market sites at many times the original price.
What you're seeing here is probably the action of automated shopping bots that scoop up products for resale at a profit. Is this a form of cyber attack or is it just rather shady commercial activity? We spoke to Ameya Talwalker, co-founder of Cequence Security, to find out more about the behavior of these bots and what can be done to curb their activity.
Researchers uncover botnet targeting decade-old CMS vulnerability
The results of a six-month investigation into a botnet that targets a vulnerability in content management systems have been released today by Imperva Research Labs.
The botnet known as 'KashmirBlack' first appeared around November 2019 and is still active. It's managed by a single command and control server and uses more than 60 servers -- mostly innocent surrogates -- as part of its infrastructure.
Botnet and exploit activity increases as attackers shift tactics
Botnet and exploit activity have increased over the course 2020's second quarter by 29 percent and 13 percent respectively, representing more than 17,000 botnet and 187,000 exploit attacks a day.
The latest Quarterly Threat Landscape Report from managed security services provider Nuspire also reveals a shift in tactics as attackers pivot away from COVID-19 themes, instead using other prominent media themes like the upcoming US election and exploiting the Black Lives Matter movement.
New bot detection feature helps fight credential stuffing
Credential stuffing attacks rely on stolen account credentials from a previous breach and are usually perpetrated by bots in an attempt to gain access to other websites.
This is a major problem for businesses, with threat actors using as many as 65,000 IP addresses for a single attack. Now though identity platform Auth0 is launching a new Bot Detection feature that it claims can reduce the effectiveness of a credential stuffing attack by as much as 85 percent.
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