Bots now account for over half of all internet traffic

Date:
Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:14:00 +0000

Description:
With the growth GenAI, bad bots are growing in number, experts warn.

FULL STORY ======================================================================
- In 2024, 51% of all internet traffic fell on bots, Thales report claims
- Not all bots are malicious, but many are
- Travel and retail industries are particularly hit

Bots, automated programs that run tasks over the internet, are now taking up more than half of all internet traffic, new research has claimed.

The 2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report found this was the first time in a decade
that 51% of all web traffic constituted bot traffic, attributing the shift largely to the rise of Artificial intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLM).

The Imperva report focuses, first and foremost, on bad bots. It argues that travel and retail sectors face an advanced bot problem, where bad bots make
up 41% and 59% of all traffic, respectively. In 2024, the travel industry was the most attacked sector with 27% of all bot attacks (up from 21% the year prior).

Bad bots

With the proliferation of Generative AI , things are only going to get worse, Imperva further states. ByteSpider Bot alone is apparently responsible for
more than half (54%) of all AI-enabled attacks. Other significant
contributors include AppleBot (26%), ClaudeBot (13%), and ChatGPT User Bot (6%).

Not all bot traffic is malicious, though. There are many useful, and often essential bots, such as search engine crawlers, monitoring bots, social media bots, or data scraping bots. They are used to index websites for search engines, check websites for performance or downtime, schedule posts or
respond automatically, or to aggregate sites and scrape valuable data.

Still, bad bots take up a hefty portion of all bot traffic, presenting a real challenge for the cybersecurity community.

These tools, whose popularity exploded roughly three years ago with the introduction of Chat-GPT, have simplified the creation and scaling of
malicious bots, Imperva noted.

As AI tools become more accessible, cyber criminals are increasingly
leveraging these technologies to create and deploy malicious bots which now account for 37% of all internet traffic a significant increase from 32% in 2023, the company explained.

This is the sixth consecutive year of growth in bad bot activity, posing security challenges for organizations striving to safeguard their digital assets.

======================================================================
Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/bots-now-account-for-over-half-of-all-i nternet-traffic

$$
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)

Mike Powell wrote to All <=-

With the growth GenAI, bad bots are growing in number, experts warn.

I listened to a podcast about bots no longer obeying ROBOTS.TXT files
and ingesting all of the web (copyrighted or otherwise) -- in the name
of dystopia.

The internet used to be based on good manners and common courtesy. The
AI people seem to feel empowered to break societal norms for the
"betterment of mankind".

Ironic when OpenAI is suing other companies for training their AI on
content that OpenAI took disregarding copyright.



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/1)

With the growth GenAI, bad bots are growing in number, experts warn.

I listened to a podcast about bots no longer obeying ROBOTS.TXT files
and ingesting all of the web (copyrighted or otherwise) -- in the name
of dystopia.

The internet used to be based on good manners and common courtesy. The
AI people seem to feel empowered to break societal norms for the
"betterment of mankind".

Yeah, I suspect that the more likely consequence, as you pointed out, will
be dystopia and not betterment. We don't need to look much further than
DOGE to see that. The empowerment to break societal norms may break
society itself.

Every time I hear or read something about this, I wonder if these
numbskulls ever read or watched any sci-fi. The Twiligh Zone and the Outer Limits alone should have taught them some lessons in not doing what they
are attempting.

Ironic when OpenAI is suing other companies for training their AI on
content that OpenAI took disregarding copyright.

That is very ironic. Hopefully, the judge will note that irony while
hearing the case.


* SLMR 2.1a * "I'm cold, and there are wolves after me!"-Granpa Simpson
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)

Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

Every time I hear or read something about this, I wonder if these numbskulls ever read or watched any sci-fi. The Twiligh Zone and the Outer Limits alone should have taught them some lessons in not doing
what they are attempting.

Sci-Fi Author:
In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.

Tech Company:
At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi
novel "Don't Create The Torment Nexus"

@AlexBlechMan on Twitter





--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/1)