Increased use of software bots opens up security risks
Software bots are being used to automate repetitive processes in two thirds of businesses, but this can present risks depending on how properly their access to data is governed.
New research from SailPoint finds many organizations do not have the correct oversight into their day-to-day bot activities. Only five percent of respondents say they have 100 percent of bots, and their access, accounted for in their identity process.
Emotet botnet comes back to life with new spam campaigns
The Emotet Botnet has started spreading several new spam campaigns again after a three-month break, according to research from Check Point.
Researchers first reported the notorious botnet taking a break in June 2019, but that the infrastructure had become active again in August. Some of the spam campaigns featured emails which contained a link to download a malicious Word file, and some contained the malicious document itself.
Automated attacks on eCommerce get more sophisticated
The sophistication level of bots attacking eCommerce sites is on the rise according to a new report from cybersecurity company Imperva.
Traffic to eCommerce sites is made up of 17.7 percent bad bots, 13.1 percent good bots and 69.2 percent humans, the findings show, and the bad bots are getting better -- but not in a good way.
Consumers prefer bots to humans
Consumers increasingly prefer to interact with bots rather than humans, especially when it comes to researching products, learning about new services or making customer service queries.
A new study from the Capgemini Research Institute finds almost 70 percent saying they will progressively replace visits to a store or bank with their voice assistant within three years’ time.
Tracking the continuing bad bot arms race
In 2018 bad bots accounted for one in five website requests (20.4 percent of web traffic), while good bots decreased slightly to make up 17.5 percent of traffic.
This is among the findings of Distil Networks' latest annual Bad Bot Report which investigated hundreds of billions of bad bot requests from 2018 over thousands of domains to provide deeper insight into the daily automated attacks.
40 percent of ticketing site traffic comes from bad bots
If you've ever tried to book tickets for a concert, festival or event you will know that it can be something of a frustrating experience, and bots could be making it even more so.
New research from Distil Networks finds 39.9 percent of traffic on ticketing sites comes from bots used by brokers, scalpers, hospitality agencies, and sundry criminals to execute a number of attacks, including denial of inventory, spinning and scalping, scraping seat map inventory, fan account takeover, and fraud.
Amplification bots used to raise the popularity and legitimacy of Twitter posts
Earlier this year we looked at Duo Security's research into Twitter bots which focused on fake followers. The company has now published some further research looking at amplification bots.
So what is an amplification bot? They exist to boost content through likes and retweets. Duo has produced an algorithm to identify these bots and was able to find more than 7,000 over a 24 hour period.
Uncovering the secret life of Twitter bots
How do you know if you're reading tweets from a real person or a bot? As bot technology becomes more sophisticated it's increasingly hard to tell.
Researchers at Duo Security have collected and analyzed data from 88 million public Twitter accounts using machine learning to spot the tactics used by malicious bots to appear legitimate and avoid detection.
One in every 17 mobile devices is used to conduct bad bot attacks
Cybercriminals are using mobile devices to avoid detection and execute a number of nefarious acts, according to a new report.
The study from bot mitigation specialist Distil Networks finds 5.8 percent -- around one in 17 -- of all mobile devices across six major cellular networks are used in such automated attacks and represent eight percent of all bad bot traffic.
Variant of Mirai botnet used to target financial sector in January
Researchers at Recorded Future believe that a Mirai botnet variant, possibly linked to the IoTroop or Reaper botnet, was utilized in attacks on at least one company, and probably more, in the financial sector in late January of this year.
The botnet targeted one company using at least 13,000 devices, each with a unique IP address, and generated traffic volumes up to 30Gb/s.
DDoS threats and bot attacks are biggest threats to API security
APIs power many of our digital experiences, but because they provide a window into applications they also present a security risk.
A new study from cyber security company Imperva reveals that 69 percent of companies have public-facing APIs which offer a route to the sensitive data behind applications.
NetMarketShare: Windows 7 has been losing share faster than we thought
Each month, analyst firm NetMarketShare releases numbers showing the state of the desktop operating system market, and we report on it.
This month, it showed the gap between Windows 10 and Windows 7 narrowing significantly (although the two operating systems aren’t quite as close as shown by StatCounter’s figures). That’s not the only change though -- the historical figures of the two operating systems have been adjusted as well, so what’s the story?
All you need to know about IoT Botnets [Q&A]
Connected devices like smart TVs and webcams aren't new -- but since their inception 30 years ago, the number of humans connected to the internet has been surpassed by the number of devices connected to it.
In fact, industry analysts estimate the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion by 2020. And as the number of connected devices increases exponentially, so the number of security risks grows as well.
Germany is the biggest source of botnets in Europe
Just a year after the Mirai malware infected connected devices to create the first IoT botnet, new research from Norton shows that global botnets have continued to grow and spread as a result of unaware users inadvertently infecting others.
According to Norton, the top three countries responsible for hosting the highest number of bots in Europe are Germany at just over eight percent, Italy at 10 percent and Russia at almost 14 percent.
How to make a chatbot
In the modern day and age, customers expect nothing less than a light speed response to their queries. How is that possible, you might ask? One word: chatbots.
In B2C services the workforce needed to handle communications is hard to manage. Sometimes you need less, sometimes you need more, and sometimes you just get swarmed. For a startup, an issue like this is hard to micromanage. On the other hand, the price for failing to do so can be heavy. Luckily, B2C online conversations are similar enough, meaning that developers can pre-program a response for any type of conversation within their scope. This is the baseline that opens up great opportunities for automation via chatbots.
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