The 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report shows that 49.6% of the traffic on the internet comes from bots in 2023 which has increased 2% from 2022. This is the highest number of bots internet traffic since 2013. The human user traffic is slowly decreasing in 2023 while there is a gradual increase in the harmful bot traffic as it is now reached to a staggering 32% mark. This increase of bots is going to negatively impact many organizations as these bad bots can attack websites, APIs and other applications.
| Bot Traffic Over the Years | Human | Good Bot | Bad Bot |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 57.00% | 19.40% | 23.60% |
| 2014 | 40.90% | 36.30% | 22.80% |
| 2015 | 54.40% | 27.00% | 18.60% |
| 2016 | 61.30% | 18.80% | 19.90% |
| 2017 | 57.80% | 20.40% | 21.80% |
| 2018 | 62.10% | 17.50% | 20.40% |
| 2019 | 62.80% | 13.10% | 24.10% |
| 2020 | 59.20% | 15.20% | 25.60% |
| 2021 | 57.70% | 14.60% | 27.70% |
| 2022 | 52.60% | 17.30% | 30.20% |
| 2023 | 50.40% | 17.60% | 32.00% |
So what exactly are bad bots? Bad bots are some applications that perform harmful tasks on the internet and spread viruses. These bots are the reason for many cybercriminal activities as well as fraud and theft. There was an increase in bad bots traffic in countries like Mexico, Ireland and Germany in 2023 while the US has seen a decrease in bad bot traffic. These bad bots are also evolving with new technologies and now they are also able to increase the internet traffic through artificial intelligence.
This report also highlights that as many organizations are rapidly adopting AI into their systems, the bad bots are becoming stronger. In fact, bad bots working with AI are the biggest reason for the increase in internet traffic. Simple bad bots have also increased from 33.4% in 2022 to 39.6% in 2023.
The report also stated there was a 10% increase in the account takeover attacks in 2023 with half of attacks targeted by API endpoints. Every industry is being affected by account takeover attacks but the industries most affected were finance, traveling and business organizations. Gaming industry was the one that saw the highest number of bad bot traffic in 2023. Advanced bots that mimic humans were mostly seen in government and law, entertainment and finance organizations.
The report says that the number of automated bots are soon going to surpass the number of humans in terms of internet traffic. Bad bots acting as mobile users are 44% of all bad bots in 2023. They are going to continue having a harmful effect on organizations all over the world and this is something to be concerned about.
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