Today, you can use bots to perform various repetitive tasks online. They execute a clearly defined sequence of instructions through scripts performed by a programmer or developer. The task may be malicious or legitimate depending on the user controlling them. Bots can help a website provide interaction with its users. They can do this through chats, answering frequently asked questions. Similarly, the bots can also perform malicious actions like scalping, scrapping, credential stuffing. When connected to a botnet, they can conduct a Distributed Denial of service (DDoS) attack on an online infrastructure.
In relation to a human being, a bot is faster. Therefore, attackers consider them to perform tasks like credential stuffing and scrapping. Such tasks require testing many credentials to check for valid ones or browsing many web pages by the user.
Why is it hard to detect bots?
With sophisticated technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, bot developers have become more intelligent. They use such technologies to develop bots having human-like characteristics making it difficult to distinguish between a bot and an actual human being. Bots can use machine learning to evade detection, like using a low and slow operation method. Since many detection mechanisms assume bots perform fast operations, low and slow techniques ensure that bots remain undetectable.
How to protect your site from bad bots
There are various techniques that you can use to protect your site from bad bots. Before looking at such methods, let us first evaluate what bad bots can do once they access your website.
What can bad bots do when they get into your website?
There are many categories of bad bots. Their actions depend on the type of bot o what its developer intended to do when he\she programmed it. Below are the various bots and what they can do when they access your website or online infrastructure.
Spambots
When they access your site, spambots send spam emails to various user categories. They accomplish this by using the address book and user contacts to perform more targeted spamming. Spambots can also post spam content on the comment section of your communication platform or the reviews page.
Keylogging bots
Stealthy, keylogging bots store the sequence of the keys pressed by a user and send them to the command-and-control center where the botmaster lives. Such keystrokes can expose valuable and confidential information like user credentials. The attacker can then conduct an account takeover attack.
Scrapper bots
Bots can scrape the content on your website if it has value. They then post the content on another website. The net effect is denying your organic traffic and reducing the number of earnings generated by your AdWords and keywords. Since they scrape everything, scrapper bots can carry proprietary content and business plans. The botmaster can sell to your competitor, reducing the competitive edge of a business.
Manipulative or propaganda bots
These are bots that spread fake news, promote propaganda, and stimulate the profile of a user. Propaganda bots can ruin the reputation of a business within a few hours that can negatively affect its brand.
Scalper bots
The ticketing industry is one industry targeted by bad bots. Scalper bots leverage on shortage of an item to make profits. They can buy many tickets from a ticketing site and later resell them at a cost higher than the original one. Scalper bots affected the gaming industry previously when PlayStation Ps5 consoles were scalped, leaving the gamers at the scalper’s mercy.
Techniques of protecting your site from bad bots
Using a captcha
They introduced captcha to tell between humans and computers (bots) apart. They protect your site from infestation by bots by adding a task that is easy for humans to solve but complex to the bots. Although today the bots can also solve captchas because of machine learning, there are other alternatives to captcha like reCAPTCHA and captcha honeypots. Note that captcha affects the user experience and may be annoying to a user and make them move off your site.
Implementing sign-up authentication
Does your site include signing up? Ensure that you have implemented sign-up authentication. Through this, you can reduce the number of accounts that a bot can register. You can do authentication through a link to an email or a one-time password (OTP) to the phone number attached to the account. Before you grant a user access to the site, they should enter the verification code, click on a link that redirects to the account, or key in the OTP. This method cements the legitimacy of an account.
Investigating the spikes in traffic
While they may seem like a win for a business, traffic spikes can originate from bot activities. Therefore, you must investigate the source of such traffic. Each traffic comes from identifiable sources, which can be seen from the HTTP headers. If the traffic sources are unknown, that is a hint of bad bots’ activity on your website. If that is the case, take up measures to ensure that you protect your site from the activities of the bad bots.
Monitoring the number of failed login attempts
Many failed logins on your site should be a red flag. Hence, it is essential to check the reasons behind the multiple failed attempts to log in. Taking timely action may be the difference between a bot getting into your website and the site’s safety. In attacks like credential stuffing, bad bots perform many attempts to login into an account to validate the credentials. Your timely action can help prevent an account takeover attack.
Monitoring the comment section
Never ignore the comment section. Ensure that you regularly check it for spam messages. By doing this, you ensure that no spamming comments are present on your site. If any was present, you could remove them. Thus, the subscribers on your platform can have meaningful conversations online. If you find spamming content, the next step is to investigate the user who posted it and banning them. You adopt a pre-moderation method through which, before they post comments on your platform, you get an email and investigate the comments manually. If it is not spam, you can then post.
Use a bot mitigation solution
Because bots have developed and are using the current technologies, methods like Web Application Firewalls (WAF) may not be effective anymore. Bot mitigation solutions use current technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence to counter the bots. They can detect, analyze, block, or prevent the bots from accessing your site in real-time. Because such tools are dedicated, thwarting the effects of bots becomes easy. In addition, such a tool provides analytics that can help you craft an anti-bot plan.
Conclusion
As seen above, there are various types of bots, malicious and good ones. Malicious bots negatively affect the operations on your website that leads to losses, financially and reputation-wise. Ensure that you have selected a prevention mechanism to protect your site from bad bots and bot activities. We recommend using a bot mitigation solution because of its many advantages.
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