People often view bots as a nuisance because both legitimate and illegitimate bots systematically siphon off resources. However, malicious bots also play a role in fraud and lead to financial losses.
Not all internet traffic comes from real users; in fact, some argue that most traffic is actually bots talking to bots. Search engine crawlers, chatbots, and analytic bots all play a pivot role in internet navigation. Malicious bots, however, drain resources and can lead to downtime or data breaches. Because these bots can mimic human behavior, they can create fake accounts, interact with marketing campaigns, and even access user accounts without permission. It’s important to understand the hidden dangers these bots pose to both online services and real customers. By recognizing their impact, businesses can implement better security measures to protect themselves from this bad bot traffic.
Check out this post to learn how to detect bots, identify bot traffic, and stop malicious activity
Types of Malicious Bots (and the Damage They Cause)
Historically, bots were simple tools that were easy to detect and thwart with tactics such as IP blocking. Things have changed, and today’s bots closely resemble human users. Some bots are even capable of leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence to solve CAPTCHA and other anti-bot mechanisms.
There are several types of bad bots, each designed to carry out specific malicious activities. From capturing sensitive information to generating fake traffic, they cause problems that affect both legitimate users and businesses. Of course, bots can have more direct impacts, harvesting user credentials, launching disruptive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, or even hoarding and purchasing real inventory to resell.
1. Credential Stuffing Bots
Human users still tend to reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and this information can become public after a data breach. Credential stuffing bots exploit password reuse by testing leaked credentials across multiple sites until they find matches, then commit fraud using compromised accounts. Once inside, they exploit the accounts for fraud or further malicious activities.
Learn more about Credential Stuffing.
2. Carding Bots
A similar threat comes from carding bots that test stolen credit card information on shopping sites. These bots make small transactions to check if a card is active. After verifying a card’s authenticity, they use it for larger purchases. Losses from fraudulent credit card transactions impact both users and businesses. Data shows that over 34% of eCommerce transactions occurred in 2024.
3. DDoS Bots
DDoS bots are a tale as old as cybercrime—there are numerous examples of notable botnets that flood websites and services with malicious traffic to trigger an outage. Often, these bots don’t seek data theft per se, but rather disrupt service availability. The impact includes lost revenue and damaged reputation as genuine users cannot access their services.
4. Scalper Bots
Have you ever wanted a limited-edition pair of sneakers or a new video game system, only to find it perpetually sold out? Scalper bots act swiftly to buy high-demand items, purchasing limited stock before human users can and then resell at inflated prices. By hoarding goods, they deprive authentic buyers of access, hurt brand reputation, and customer satisfaction.
5. Inventory Hoarding Bots.
These bots systematically map product information such as SKUs, descriptions, and prices. This data can be used as competitive intelligence to undercut competitors or create unfair market conditions.
6. Web Scraping Bots
Scraping bots come in several flavors: content scraping, email scraping, and web scraping. Their goal is to gather information, often copyrighted or sensitive, for reposting or redistribution.
7. Click Fraud Bots
Click fraud bots are automated programs designed to mimic human behavior by clicking on online advertisements, links, or other clickable elements without genuine interest. These bots can lead to financial losses for advertisers or revenue gains for competitors.
To counter these challenges, bot detection and mitigation become essential. Implementing a robust bot management program helps businesses distinguish between real and fake traffic, ensuring that resources aren’t wasted and that businesses can focus on serving legitimate users.
For a deeper dive, check out Protect Your Business from Malware and Botnets.
The Financial Toll of Bot Attacks
Bot attacks impose unseen financial burdens on businesses across various sectors. While some impacts have direct financial consequences—having to refund fraudulent transactions, increased marketing costs, and paying fines and penalties—others have more indirect impacts, such as wasting resources or impacting brand reputation.
Direct Loss: Wasted Ad Spend
One of the most direct financial impacts of bot attacks is wasted advertising spend. When bots flood websites and click on ads, they drive up costs without delivering any return on investment. Companies find themselves paying for fake impressions that do not lead to genuine user interactions. Advertising budgets see a spike, yet reach few real customers.
As fraud bots mimic legitimate users, distinguishing between human and bot traffic becomes challenging. This not only impacts the bottom line but also skews marketing effectiveness, forcing businesses to implement costly security measures.
Direct Loss: Infrastructure Costs
Not all businesses have the infrastructure to absorb the full force of a DDoS attack. Experiencing a bot attack can have cascading impacts on a business’s bottom line, usually as higher usage rates and Operational Expenses (OPEX) from network, bandwidth, or CDN (Content Delivery Network), or as increased Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) on servers, routing and switching, and software licenses.
Direct Loss: Regulatory and Compliance Penalties
Many businesses must meet stringent regulatory and compliance requirements to protect sensitive customer information. PCI-DDS, for example, mandates that eCommerce platforms safeguard payment information. Businesses that experience bot-induced data breaches may be found non-compliant with data protection regulations, which can lead to hefty fines and legal actions.
Indirect Loss: Internal resources
Responding to any cyber incident requires a significant effort from internal teams. If a business lacks the resources to manage a bot intrusion or DDoS attack, it will have to outsource its response, potentially spending significantly more. Additionally, even when organizations invest in bot mitigation solutions, it can have an impact on internal resources if the solution requires significant application or web server modifications to integrate with existing infrastructure.
Indirect Loss: Erosion of trust
Customers have high expectations from their online browsing experiences; data shows there is a direct connection between page load times and conversion rates. When bots cause disruptions, slow load times, or compromise sensitive information, it tarnishes the company’s reputation, leading to a loss of customer confidence and potential revenue decline over time.
Indirect Loss: Distorted analytic data
When bots masquerading as visitors, website analytics become muddled, potentially leading to misguided business strategies and marketing spend.
Block Bots, Not Customers, with UltraBot Manager
Bots have evolved into sophisticated tools capable of sneaking past your defenses. One of the most effective things businesses can do is leverage a robust bot management and mitigation strategy. A good bot management solution should be frictionless, easily integrating with your environment to provide rapid value and enhance the customer experience.
Bots aren’t a problem with UltraBot Manager. Our solution enables organizations to quickly identify and block malicious bot traffic, accelerating time to value with deployments that require no app instrumentation or modification.
Interested in learning more? Get in touch with us to tailor a solution that meets your unique needs.
