Bad Bots Build Presence Across the Web

Bad bot traffic is growing and site scraping is making coronavirus malware more effective. Those are two of the conclusions in a new report released today, which also notes that, on average, more than a quarter of a website's traffic is generated by machines rather than humans.

"The Big Bad Bot Problem 2020" report is based on studies by Radware researchers, who found that 31.3% of e-commerce traffic in February was from malicious bots. Their actions are becoming more dangerous because 58.1% of the Internet bots Radware found can mimic human behavior in their attacks.

One of the uses of human mimicking is to add to the "infodemic" of misleading and erroneous information, spam, and phishing attempts concerning the coronavirus pandemic. According to the researchers, these bots are key components of campaigns to spread propaganda through social media accounts created by automated processes.

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