Based on current analyses, the security CDN Incapsula, a subsidiary of Imperva, has come to the conclusion that rather than humans it is bots that are responsible for 56 percent of all Internet data traffic. This proportion is said to have grown suddenly by around 10 percent within one year.
The bots include search machine crawlers, but also tools or scripts that analyse and evaluate information from websites. The 2014 Bot Traffic Report reveals that alongside this, the web is populated by countless malicious programs. The proportion of automated web traffic comprised by these is said to have increased by around 50 percent in recent years. The report details that around a third of the traffic on every website worldwide is already caused by “bad bots”. Just under a quarter of these bad bots are said to have the aim of bringing down servers using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. However, it says that many malicious programs also specifically search for customer and payment information. Apparently, the latest generation of bots are even able to reproduce and further develop themselves.
The source of this data is an evaluation of 15 billion visits carried out via the Incapsula network within a period of 90 days. Information was taken from around 20,000 websites, each receiving at least 10 visits a day.
In its blog, Incapsula also cites figures relating to the attacks: almost half of them last between six and 24 hours, eight percent last up to seven days and four percent besieged the server for even longer. Incapsula estimates the average costs for affected companies at around USD 40,000 an hour. Online shops in particular suffer massive losses when their websites go down. For other companies, the loss of data and damage to their reputations have particularly severe financial consequences. (resource: Incapsula/rf)