Who surfs the internet?
The company INCAPSULA has carried out a study in which they analyse the origin of access to web pages.
In this study they have come to the conclusion that 61% of the accesses come from BOTS while only the remaining 39% is human trafficking.
To reach this conclusion, the firm that produced the report observed 1.450 billion visits made by bots over a 90-day period.
What are bots?
A bot is a computer program that simulates human behavior.
Bots are used to simplify or automate tasks that can be very tedious to perform manually.
Good bots are, for example, search engines. Within bots, there are good and bad ones.
Bad bots include SPAM, among others. These have been reduced thanks to GOOGLE and its anti-spam campaign.
How do bots work?
Bots typically spread across the Internet looking for vulnerable and unprotected computers to infect. When they find an unprotected computer, they quickly infect it and report it back to their creator. Their goal is to remain hidden until they are told to perform a task.15
Once a bot takes control of a computer, it can be used to perform various automated tasks, such as:
| Submit | Robar | DoS (denial of service) | Click Fraud |
| They send – spam – virus – spyware |
They steal private and personal information and communicate it to the malicious user: – credit card numbers – bank credentials – other personal and confidential information |
They launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against a specific target. Cybercriminals extort money from website owners in exchange for giving them back control of the affected sites. However, everyday users' systems are the most frequent target of these attacks, which are only intended to annoy. | Scammers use bots to increase their web advertising revenue by automatically clicking on Internet ads. |
