Cloudflare’s Bot Management is used by organizations around the world to proactively detect and mitigate automated bot traffic. To do this, Cloudflare leverages machine learning models that help predict whether a particular HTTP request is coming from a bot or not, and further distinguishes between benign and malicious bots. Cloudflare serves over 55 million HTTP requests per second — so our machine learning models need to run at Cloudflare scale.

For years Netacea has been reporting on the evolving scalper bot landscape. From the early days of sneaker bots, through to hobbyists snatching PlayStation 5 consoles and even vaccine appointments throughout the pandemic, we’ve closely monitored what items scalpers target. Now, a whole new breed of scalper bot has emerged – one that exploits discounts and pricing errors instead of exclusive hype drops, costing retailers hundreds of thousands in lost inventory.

How do you approach bot management? For certain businesses, the optimal approach could involve selecting a single bot management software to meet their existing bot detection and management needs. For some companies, combining behavioural analytics for identifying malicious bot behaviour and a WAF (WAAP) to defend against vulnerability exploits, DDoS attacks, and API security breaches is essential.

Netacea is a noted vendor in a new Forrester report, The Bot Management Software Landscape, Q1 2024. The report provides important independent research into the evolution of automated attacks threatening businesses in the coming year, and how bot management solutions are positioned to defend against them. The main trend cited in the report is that now, anyone can launch a sophisticated bot attack.

The Mirai Botnet, famous for massive DDoS attacks, used SYN flood techniques to hack 600,000 IoT devices. Targets like KrebsOnSecurity, Lonestar cell, and Dyn. The impact cascaded across key service providers that relied on Dyn’s services, affecting entities such as Sony Playstation servers, Amazon, GitHub, Netflix, PayPal, Reddit, and Twitter.

A botnet is a network of infected devices known as bots, which are controlled by a single attacking party known as a bot herder. Botnets are made up of Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as computers, mobile devices, network routers and smart TVs. Botnets are used to carry out time-consuming cyber activities such as managing online chatrooms or tracking internal data. However, cybercriminals can use botnets for malicious purposes such as launching large-scale cyber attacks and stealing sensitive data.

In addition to the overt signs of cyber threats we've become conditioned to recognize, like ransomware emails and strange login requests, malicious actors are now utilizing another way to achieve their nefarious purposes — by using your everyday devices. These hidden dangers are known as botnets. Unbeknownst to most, our everyday devices, from toasters to smart fridges, can unwittingly be enlisted as footsoldiers in a digital army with the potential to bring down even corporate giants.