A botnet is a network of malware-infected devices used to launch coordinated attacks either against a single target, like during a DDoS attack, or multiple targets like during email phishing attacks. All infected machines in a botnet are remotely controlled by a single cyber attacker that could be located anywhere in the world.

We now live in an online-first world, accelerated by the events of the pandemic in 2020. Fraudsters have taken advantage of these conditions, using automated bot attacks to prey on businesses and consumers. To quantify the devastating financial impact bots are having on businesses of all types, Netacea surveyed 440 businesses from across the USA and UK. Read the full results in our report: What Are Bots Costing Your Business?

On the countdown to a new release, every second counts to snap up those limited-edition new kicks or sought-after concert tickets. Online attackers know that when deploying bots to gain a competitive advantage, without masking their activity it’s a matter of time before their activity is blocked by the target eCommerce platform. Industries are becoming more and more alert to bots and their ever-increasing sophistication.

As the pandemic pushed more businesses to an online-first model, cybercriminals seized opportunities to profit from fraudulent activity. But the financial impact of these attacks on businesses has been hard to quantify. Netacea recently surveyed 440 businesses from across the USA and UK to understand how much financial impact bot attacks are having across different industries.

In gaming and betting, it is said that the house always wins. However, some bettors are constantly looking for loopholes to guarantee a profit no matter the outcome of their bets. They have even developed sophisticated software tools to help with a controversial tactic called arbitrage betting, which costs the industry millions each year.

The term DDoS attack refers to a malicious actor or group of actors intentionally trying to overwhelm a victim’s computer network with traffic. The large influx of network traffic being directed at the target can cause serious issues for legitimate traffic, such as regular users who need to access websites, data or services. Everyone from gamer sites to large enterprises fears the threat of distributed denial of service attacks.

Netacea surveyed 440 enterprise organizations based in the USA and UK across travel, entertainment, eCommerce, telecommunications and financial services to understand the cost of bot traffic on businesses. Our respondents indicated that they are aware of the increase in scale and frequency of bot attacks over the course of Covid-19 pandemic, with 85% more attacks occurring in 2020 vs. 2019.

Over the past five years, blockchain technology has gone mainstream. More and more investors, businesses and opportunistic hobbyists are filling their cryptocurrency wallets with crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In fact, the global user base of all cryptocurrencies increased by an estimated 190 percent between 2018 and 2020. There is undoubtedly money to be made, ushering newcomers into the world of blockchain.

The Splunk Threat Research Team (STRT) has detected the resurface of a Crypto Botnet using Telegram, a widely used messaging application that can create bots and execute code remotely. The STRT has identified attacking sources from China and Iranian IP addresses specifically targeting AWS IP address space. The malicious actors behind this botnet specifically target Windows server operating systems with Remote Desktop Protocol.