Security News > 2021 > April > Bad bot traffic reaching an all-time high over the past year

In 2020, Imperva saw the highest percentage of bad bot traffic since 2014, while traffic from humans fell by 5.7%. More than 40% of all web traffic requests originated from a bot last year, suggesting the growing scale and widespread impact of bots in daily life.

Advanced Persistent Bots remained the majority of bad bot traffic over the past year, amounting to 57.1%. These bots are responsible for high-speed abuse, misuse and attacks on websites, mobile apps and APIs.

The travel industry saw the greatest percentage of sophisticated bad bot traffic while government sites also experienced an increase, with bots involved in account takeover, data scraping of business registration listings and voter registration.

The percentage of good bot traffic grew by 16% over the past year, and that's a reason for concern.

"As we've monitored over the past eight years, bad bots continue to ravage the Internet, while attack characteristics are becoming more advanced and nuanced over time," says Edward Roberts, Director of Strategy, Application Security, Imperva.

"Throughout the past year and during a global pandemic, bad bots have thrived by targeting new markets and the impacts are now felt by everyday consumers. The Grinch Bot disruption to the gaming hardware industry in late 2020 is one example of what happens when bots go unchecked and cause denial of inventory."

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