According to a new report, bots will account for 47.4% of all internet traffic in 2022, a 5.1% rise over the previous year. According to the same data, human traffic has dropped to its lowest level in eight years, at 52.6%.
Imperva released its 10th annual Bad Bot Report this week, a global survey of automated bot traffic on the internet. The annual study informs security and commercial executives on the growth of bot technology and automated traffic. This year’s report also notes significant developments in bad bot technology.
The volume of bad bot traffic – dangerous automated software applications capable of high-speed abuse, misuse, and attacks — increased to 30.2% for the fourth straight year, a 2.5% rise over 2021.
Other highlights of the report include:
In 2022, the share of “advanced” bad bots accounted for 51.2% of total bad bot traffic. In 2021, the level of sophistication of harmful bots was 25.9%.
Account takeover (ATO) attacks surged 155% in 2022, with account takeover accounting for 15% of all login attempts in the previous 12 months across all industries.
In 2022, malicious bots exploiting business logic accounted for 17% of all API attacks. Furthermore, in 2022, 35% of account takeover assaults specifically targeted an API.
Travel (24.7%), retail (21%), and financial services (12.7%) saw the most bot attacks. The industries with the largest proportions of harmful bot traffic on their websites and applications were gaming (58.7%) and telecoms (47.7%).
Seven of the thirteen nations examined in the survey had bot traffic levels that above the global average of 30.2%. Germany (68.6%), Ireland (45.1%), and Singapore (43.1%) rated first and second, respectively, while the United States (32.1%) outperformed the average.
In 2022, one in every five bad bots utilized Mobile Safari as their primary browser, up from 16.1% in 2021.
