Netacea, a bot detection company, surveyed 440 businesses across the tourism, entertainment, eCommerce, financial and telecommunications services in the United States and the UK. Tested businesses have profits ranging from $ 350m to $ 7bn. It found that all sectors had a major bot problem, with two-thirds of businesses experiencing website attacks. 46% of respondents reported that mobile apps were attacked, while 23% – mainly financial services – said bots had attacked their APIs. According to the study respondents, automated bots run by malicious characters cost businesses an average of 3.6% of their annual revenue. Of the 25% of businesses most affected, this equates to at least a quarter of a billion dollars ($ 250 million) annually. The biggest problem for most account spy businesses is that they use broken passwords to retrieve accounts with guaranteed installations, even though sniper bots, scalper bots, and scraper bots aren’t too far away.
Another relevant and common problem of the cyber security sector is the time between attacks and their detection. On average, it takes 14 weeks to learn about the attack. It means that malicious hackers can rule for free for months before their fault is realized. Netacea has identified four main types of automatic bots. Test accounts take an open username and password list in pairs (combo list) and test them via the website. This is also known as credential attacks and is based on reused passwords. Scalper bots perform the process of purchasing limited goods, such as event tickets, completing the exit process at a time limit that will take any legitimate user. Scraper bots are used to collect large amounts of data from websites for use elsewhere. Sniper bots monitor time-based activity and send information at the last minute, removing the opportunity for other people to respond to that action. Other bots include DDoS attacks, which use a large number of compromised devices (also known as a botnet) to hack a website and hack it offline, card bots check stolen card details, fraudulent bots, and inventory hoarding bots.
By Vedant Soni
Campus Ambassador, WCSF