A report by a cybersecurity company suggests that nearly half of the world’s internet traffic is now produced by computer systems called bots.
A bot is a software program that often works by itself on the internet to perform the same kinds of actions as humans do.
The report, produced by California-based internet security company Imperva, found that 49.6 percent of worldwide internet traffic came from bots in 2023. That is the highest level reported since the company started examining bot traffic levels in 2013. Traffic from human users fell to 50.4 percent.
Imperva’s study also found that web traffic linked to “bad bots" grew to 32 percent in 2023, a rise of 30.2 percent from 2022.
Nanhi Singh heads application security at Imperva. She said in a statement that bots are currently “one of the most pervasive and growing threats facing every industry.”
Bots are generally designed to visit websites and independently search for many kinds of online information. They are able to operate at much greater speeds than humans and can process repeated searches and process large amounts of data.
Online search advisor Yoast notes that some bots are considered good because they are built to carry out legal, productive activities for businesses.
Bots can also be useful to individuals through tools such as OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT. A chatbot also operates online independently but can assist humans with searching, writing, or processing large amounts of data in a short period. ChatGPT and similar tools are known as generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Other bots are considered malicious, or bad, because they are trained to hack, or break into, network computer systems. These kinds of bots present themselves as humans and collect private data or financial information that can be used to commit crimes. And some bots are designed to spread misinformation and false news.
Some bots, called “scrapers,” visit web pages and scrape, or capture, all the data on the website they can find. Another kind is known as a spam bot, which is designed to overload a website or social media service with messages or emails.
Imperva’s latest report noted that an increase in generative AI systems across the world resulted in the number of “simple bots” increasing about six percent to 39.6 percent in 2023.
Much of this increase was linked to active AI training systems on the internet known as large language models. Such systems collect huge amounts of online data to train AI systems like ChatGPT.
The study suggested some countries have a much bigger problem with bad bots than others. Web traffic linked to malicious bots in 2023 was highest in Ireland, at 71 percent, the researchers found. Germany was next, with 67.5 percent. Mexico had the next highest at 42.8 percent. In the United States, bad bot traffic was reported to be 35.4 percent, up more than 3 percent from 2022.
Imperva reported that account takeovers – one of the most severe results of bad bot activity – increased 10 percent in 2023 over 2022. Of all login attempts across the internet, 11 percent were linked with account takeovers, the company said.
The highest number of account takeovers – 36.8 percent – happened in the financial services industry. Next was the travel industry, with 11.5 percent, followed by business services at eight percent.
Imperva’s Singh said the problem is likely to worsen in coming years to the point where such bots could become “omnipresent.” She urged organizations to “proactively” introduce bot management and security tools in an effort to limit automated traffic and prevent dangerous account takeovers.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this report based on reports from Imperva and Reuters.
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Words in This Story
application – n. a computer program designed for a particular purpose
pervasive – adj. influencing a large area
omnipresent – adj. present or having an effect everywhere at the same time
proactive – adj. taking action in advance to cause change
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