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Malicious bots made up almost a third of all internet traffic in 2023

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At 71%, Ireland had the highest percentage of malicious bot traffic in the previous year

According to a recent report, malicious bots produced nearly one-third of all internet traffic recorded in 2023.

A piece of software that performs mass automated tasks on the internet, like messaging, is called an internet bot. On the other hand, a malicious bot can perform a variety of malicious tasks, including denial of service attacks, spamming, account takeovers, and web scraping. They impair internet services and compel companies to increase their expenditures on customer service and network infrastructure.

According to the company’s analysis of automated bot traffic on the internet, titled “Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024,” shows that bad bot traffic increased to 32% in 2023 from 30.2% the previous year. Conversely, the percentage of human traffic dropped to 50.4%.

Bots On The Rise

Ever since Imperva began monitoring automated traffic over ten years ago, the proportion of bot traffic to total traffic has been rising annually. Bots now generate about half (49.6%) of all internet traffic, an increase of 2% year over year.

“Bots are one of the most pervasive and growing threats facing every industry. Organisations must proactively address the threat of bad bots as attackers sharpen their focus on API-related abuses that can lead to account compromise or data exfiltration,” Nanhi Singh, General Manager, Application Security at Imperva, a Thales company said.

At 71%, Ireland had the highest percentage of malicious bot traffic in the previous year. Germany (67.5%) and Mexico (42.8%) came next.

The percentage increased marginally in the United States as well, going from 32.1% to 35.4%. The researchers went on to say that “every industry has a bot problem” and that “bad bots are not limited to a specific industry.”

Still, with 57.2% of all bot traffic, the gaming industry saw the highest percentage. The industries with the highest frequency of bot attacks were retail (24.4%), travel (20.7%), and financial services (15.7%).

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