It is necessary to pay attention to malicious bots because they represent 32% of Internet traffic. These are the data from the global report on bad bots published by Thales Imperva Bad Bot Report is a global analysis of automated bot traffic on the Internet. Nearly half of all internet traffic in 2023 came from bots, a 2% increase from the previous year. This is the highest level Imperva has recorded since it began monitoring automated traffic in 2013.
Maximum attention is needed for malicious bots
For the fifth year consecutively, the percentage of web traffic associated with malicious bots has grown to 32% in 2023, compared to 30.2% in 2022. While traffic from human users dropped to 50.4%. Automated traffic costs organizations billions of dollars per year due to attacks on websites, APIs, and applications.
An ever-growing threat
Nanhi Singh, General Manager, Application Security at Imperva, a Thales Group company
Bots are one of the most pervasive and growing threats facing every industry. From simple web scraping to creating malicious accounts, to spam and the inability to use network services, bots have a negative impact on organizations. They affect online services and require large investments in customer support and infrastructure. Organizations must proactively address the threat of malicious bots. As attackers focus on API-related abuse that can lead to account compromise or data exfiltration.
The most important data in the report
The most relevant data highlighted in the Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024 include:
The global average of malicious bot traffic reached 32%.
Ireland (71%), Germany (67.5%), and Mexico (42.8%) saw the highest levels of malicious bot traffic in 2023. The United States also saw a slightly higher ratio of bot traffic harmful, equal to 35.4% compared to 2022 (32.1%).
The growing use of generative AI is linked to the rise of simple bots. The rapid adoption of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) has led the volume of simple bots to increase to 39.6% in 2023. The technology uses web scraping bots and automated crawlers to power the training models. While allowing non-technical users to write automated scripts for personal use.
Beware of malicious bots, they represent a third of internet traffic
Account takeover is a persistent business risk.
Account takeover (ATO) attacks increased 10% in 2023, compared to the same period the previous year. Notably, 44% of all ATO attacks targeted API endpoints, up from 35% in 2022. Of all Internet login attempts, 11% were associated with account takeovers. The industries that experienced the highest volume of ATO attacks in 2023 were financial services (36.8%), travel (11.5%), and business services (8%).
APIs are a popular vector for attacks.
Land automated threats caused a significant 30% of API attacks in 2023. Among these, the 17% they were malicious bots that exploited business logic vulnerabilities, a flaw in API design and implementation that allows attackers to manipulate legitimate functionality and gain access to sensitive data or user accounts. THE cyber criminals they use automated bots to find and exploit APIs, which serve as a direct path to sensitive data, making them a prime target for business logic abuse.
Every industry has a bot problem.
For the second year in a row, gaming (57.2%) saw the highest percentage of malicious bot traffic. Meanwhile, retail (24.4%), travel (20.7%) and financial services (15.7%) saw the highest volume of bot attacks. The percentage of advanced malicious bots, those that closely mimic human behavior and evade defenses, was highest on Government (75.8%), Entertainment (70.8%), and Financial Services (67.1%) websites. ).
Malicious bot traffic from residential ISPs grows by up to 25.8%.
Early malicious bot evasion techniques relied on masquerading as user agent (browser) commonly used by human users. Malicious bots masquerading as mobile user agents accounted for 44.8% of all malicious bot traffic over the past year. Sophisticated actors combine mobile user agents with the use of residential or mobile ISPs. Residential proxies allow bot operators to evade detection by making the traffic source appear to be a legitimate ISP-assigned residential IP address.
Beware of malicious bots, they represent a third of internet traffic
Nanhi Singh, General Manager, Application Security at Imperva, a Thales Group company
Automated bots they will overcome soon the percentage of Internet traffic coming from humans. They will change the way organizations produce and secure websites and applications. As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become ubiquitous. Organizations need to invest in tools management there but it the safetyAPIs to manage the threat of automated and malicious traffic.