MUCH More than you could imagine POSSIBLY ; ...Bot traffic is up by a fifth from last year, according to Incapsula. Most of that growth comes from “good bots,” like those from analytics companies and search engines that are crawling sites more frequently. Legitimate bot activity has jumped 55 percent, which Incapsula suggests is largely the result of new online services and increased crawling by search engines seeking the timeliest results. Those search engines and other good bots account for 31 percent of web traffic.
Another 30.5 percent of traffic comes from malicious bots, including “scrapers,” which look to steal content or email addresses; “hacking tools”; a shrinking pool of spammers; and a growing group of what Incapsula calls “other impersonators” and describes as “unclassified bots with hostile intentions.”
Malicious bot traffic as a percentage of overall traffic hasn’t changed, but the specific kinds of bot activity has shifted, Incapsula said. Spam bots have decreased from two percent of traffic in 2012 to 0.5 percent this year. “The most plausible explanation for this steep decrease is Google’s anti-spam campaign,” the report said.
Activity by more sophisticated impersonator bots – “the tools of top-tier hackers who are proficient enough to create their own malware” – has risen, though. These impersonators are usually custom-made for a specific activity that involves penetrating a website’s security, according to the report. “The 8 percent increase in the number of such bots highlights the increased activity of such hackers,” Incapsula said, “as well as the rise in targeted cyber-attacks.”
MUCH More than you could imagine POSSIBLY ; ...Bot traffic is up by a fifth from last year, according to Incapsula. Most of that growth comes from “good bots,” like those from analytics companies and search engines that are crawling sites more frequently. Legitimate bot activity has jumped 55 percent, which Incapsula suggests is largely the result of new online services and increased crawling by search engines seeking the timeliest results. Those search engines and other good bots account for 31 percent of web traffic.
ReplyDeleteAnother 30.5 percent of traffic comes from malicious bots, including “scrapers,” which look to steal content or email addresses; “hacking tools”; a shrinking pool of spammers; and a growing group of what Incapsula calls “other impersonators” and describes as “unclassified bots with hostile intentions.”
Malicious bot traffic as a percentage of overall traffic hasn’t changed, but the specific kinds of bot activity has shifted, Incapsula said. Spam bots have decreased from two percent of traffic in 2012 to 0.5 percent this year. “The most plausible explanation for this steep decrease is Google’s anti-spam campaign,” the report said.
Activity by more sophisticated impersonator bots – “the tools of top-tier hackers who are proficient enough to create their own malware” – has risen, though. These impersonators are usually custom-made for a specific activity that involves penetrating a website’s security, according to the report. “The 8 percent increase in the number of such bots highlights the increased activity of such hackers,” Incapsula said, “as well as the rise in targeted cyber-attacks.”