Not all bots are bad, there are good bots, such as those used by search engines and price comparison services. But bad bots are becoming more of a problem, whether buying game consoles or concert tickets (I still regret missing out on AC/DC tickets) or automating attacks against them. API). Bots used to be an expensive investment for criminals, but now you can rent bots, and the infrastructure they need, as a complete service. Criminals use them in many ways and classic bot attacks always go after any kind of limited product. For example, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some online shopping services in India found delivery slots taken over by bots and offered for resale to desperate people. AMD graphics cards and Sony's PlayStation 5 have also fallen victim to speculation bots. AMD even recommended that resellers switch to manual processing of purchases for the first time to validate that the orders actually came from individual customers. And did I mention those AC/DC tickets? However, the modern bot is much more complex and sophisticated than a simple scraper or automated online shopping tool. They are used to probe the IT infrastructure of companies around the clock. They look for weaknesses in the credentials to support user accounts. And they are increasingly targeting APIs, either to support accounts or to bypass traditional cybersecurity setups.
Modern advanced robots
Today's bot providers have also evolved: they are very professional and well organized. They even keep standard office hours and don't just work in the middle of the night. Vendors sell bots through online marketplaces, and some offer money-back guarantees. Some bot vendors have 24/7 help lines if you can't get your bot to do what you want. They mimic many of the processes of professional software vendors, such as automating the testing of their products. But getting a bot is only half the battle. Criminals need an infrastructure to manage them. The latest generation of robots would operate from a compromised data center or server. This made them relatively easy to identify and block via IP address. Modern bots are often tied to seemingly legitimate online identities, credentials, and email accounts to bypass basic protections and the latest version of reCAPTCHA. They are tied to compromised home internet accounts and their traffic comes from thousands of different and seemingly legitimate IP addresses, making defense very difficult. All of this means that bots do a remarkably efficient job of hiding in standard browser traffic. This makes it difficult to defend against them, especially if you don't want to irritate customers or users with expensive identity procedures or risk blocking legitimate traffic.
Ways Bad Bots Can Hurt Businesses
While many organizations have traditionally been prime targets, bad bots are a threat in every industry. Like regular human cyberattacks, bots can harm your business in a number of ways, including: • Gift card fraud bots can abuse gift card balance checking features to test a large number of possible card numbers. When a match is found, the balance is used to make fraudulent purchases online. • Credit card fraud bots often use stolen card data to purchase products and services online. Millions of credit card details are sold online every year, and bots can easily be used to test them on a large scale. • Credential attacks or account hijacking bots, which are similar to credit card fraud in that they use "credential stuffing" attacks with stolen usernames and passwords. When a successful connection occurs, the account is taken over quickly. Depending on the attacked website, compromised accounts can be used for financial fraud, spam, extortion, password reuse attacks, and other malicious activities. • Account creation bots create free accounts to use to send spam or exploit "new account" promotions. • Scratch bots are used to steal data from websites, most of the time related to prices. This technique is used by deceptive organizations to help them downsize their competition or gather intelligence. In the financial industry, many hedge funds use scratch robots to gather information on which to base investment decisions.
Spam bots and click bots
Spambots fall into two main categories: • Bots that collect email addresses to add to spam lists. • Bots that abuse comment forms on blogs and websites to post malicious ads or URLs. Clickbots are used for two main purposes: • To earn money. Scammers can easily add pay-per-click ads to their own websites and use bots to increase click-through rates. • Target companies that pay for PPC ads. These companies pay the ad network (for example, Google Ads) every time someone clicks on their ads. Clickbots are used to artificially inflate the cost of advertising without generating actual traffic. • Payment and app abuse bots are generally very sophisticated and are used for a variety of malicious purposes. In e-commerce, they are often used to manipulate prices and purchase products or services at discounted prices.
Defend yourself from bots
Defending your infrastructure against bot attacks should be seen as a crucial part of your holistic defenses. While many security suites claim to offer bot protection as standard, you should do some research on what you're getting. Organizations need protection that combines built-in bot identifiers with cloud-based artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to detect bot attacks. It uses data from a massive honeypot network to detect known bots and also allows you to authorize approved bots by IP or URL. It provides a clear dashboard to track bot activity, origin, and specific applications. To protect businesses from malicious bots, business leaders need full control and insight into the wide range of bots that hit their website every day. Known malicious bots are blocked instantly, while unknown bots are identified and mitigated in five seconds on average. This is essential as new bots are constantly being developed to bypass inferior checks or understandings. With the right tools and applications, organizations can improve their security with better website performance and user experience for real customers, real-time defense against all malicious bot-based activity, and the power to categorize, manage, and block robots individually.