Undetected web scraping bots severely impact
ecommerce
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 25,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cloud company that powers and
protects life online, today released a new State of the Internet
(SOTI) report that details the security and business threats that
organizations face with the proliferation of web scraping bots.
Scraping Away Your Bottom Line: How Web Scrapers Impact Ecommerce
finds that bots compose 42% of overall web traffic, and 65% of
these bots are malicious.
With its reliance on revenue-generating web applications, the
ecommerce sector has been most affected by high-risk bot traffic.
Although some bots are beneficial to business, web scraper bots are
being used for competitive intelligence and espionage, inventory
hoarding, imposter site creation, and other schemes that have a
negative impact on both the bottom line and the customer
experience. There are no existing laws that prohibit the use of
scraper bots, and they are hard to detect due to the rise of
artificial intelligence (AI) botnets, but there are some things
companies can do to mitigate them.
"Bots continue to present massive challenges resulting in
multiple pain points for app and API owners," said Patrick Sullivan, CTO, Security Strategy at
Akamai. "This includes scraping that can steal web data and
produce brand impersonation sites. The scraper landscape is also
changing due to advancements like headless browser technology,
requiring organizations to take an approach to managing this type
of bot activity that is more sophisticated than other
JavaScript-based mitigations."
Key findings from the report include:
- AI botnets have the ability to discover and scrape unstructured
data and content that is in a less consistent format or location.
Additionally, they can use actual business intelligence to enhance
the decision-making process through collecting, extracting, and
then processing data.
- Scraper bots can be leveraged to generate more sophisticated
phishing campaigns by grabbing product images, descriptions, and
pricing information to create counterfeit storefronts or phishing
sites aimed at stealing credentials or credit card
information.
- Bots can be used to facilitate new account opening abuse —
which, according to recent research, composes up to 50% of
fraud losses.
- Technical impacts that organizations face as a result of being
scraped, whether the scraping was done with malicious or beneficial
intentions, include website performance degradation, site metric
pollution, compromised credentials attacks from phishing sites,
increased compute costs, and more.
The Scraping Away Your Bottom Line research report offers
mitigation strategies against scraper bots and features a case
study that shows how websites operate much faster and efficiently
once defenses against these bots are put into place. In addition,
the research addresses compliance considerations that must be taken
into account in light of these increasing attacks.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Akamai's State of
the Internet (SOTI) reports. The SOTI series provides expert
insights on the cybersecurity and web performance landscapes, based
on data gathered from Akamai Connected Cloud.
About Akamai
Akamai powers and protects life online.
Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and
secure their digital experiences — helping billions of people live,
work, and play every day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively
distributed edge and cloud platform, puts apps and experiences
closer to users and keeps threats farther away. Learn more about
Akamai's cloud computing, security, and content delivery solutions
at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on
X, formerly known as Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Contact
Jim
Lubinskas
Akamai Media Relations
703.907.9103
jlubinsk@akamai.com
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.