Traffic from “bad bots”—those created with malicious intent—first surpassed good bot traffic in 2016, Imperva’s research said, and it’s been getting worse. Bad bots comprised 37% of internet traffic in 2024, up from 32% the year prior. Good bots accounted for just 14% of the internet’s traffic.
Bad bots do all kinds of unpleasant things. An increasing number try to hijack peoples’ online accounts, which they often do by “credential stuffing.” This is where a bot takes a password and email address that has been stolen and leaked online, and then tries those credentials across a myriad of services in the hope that its owner will have reused the password elsewhere. These account takeover attacks have skyrocketed lately. Other attacks include scraping data from websites, which is a problem for businesses that don’t want their intellectual property stolen, and also for the individuals who own that data.
Read more…
Source: Malwarebytes Labs
Sign up for our Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- US cargo tech company publicly exposed its shipping systems and customer data to the web
January 14, 2026
For the past year, security researchers have been urging the global shipping industry to shore up their cyber defenses after a spate of cargo thefts were linked to hackers. The researchers say they have seen elaborate hacks targeting logistics companies to hijack and redirect large amounts of their customers’ products into the hands of criminals, in ...
- Online shoppers at risk as Magecart skimming hits major payment networks
January 14, 2026
Researchers have been tracking a Magecart campaign that targets several major payment providers, including American Express, Diners Club, Discover, and Mastercard. Magecart is an umbrella term for criminal groups that specialize in stealing payment data from online checkout pages using malicious JavaScript, a technique known as web skimming. In the early days, Magecart started as a ...
- Secure connectivity principles for Operational Technology (OT)
January 14, 2026
Operational technology (OT) environments – which have long been centred on safety, uptime, and operational continuity – are now more interconnected than ever. Driven by the need for increased efficiency, agility, and integration, these advancements offer significant operational benefits (such as real-time analytics, predictive maintenance and remote monitoring & administration), but they also introduce risks. Organisations ...
- China: Authorities tell domestic companies to stop using US and Israeli cybersecurity software
January 14, 2026
Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by more than a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, three people briefed on the matter said. As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. and both sides vie for tech supremacy, Beijing has been ...
- Hackers claim to have Target source code for sale following recent cyberattack
January 13, 2026
Hackers are apparently selling internal source code stolen from American retail giant Target. A previously unknown threat actor posted in an underground hacking community to claim they were selling Target’s data, and that this was the first of many datasets to go on auction. To support their claim, the poster created multiple repositories on Gitea, a ...
- Why iPhone users should update and restart their devices now
January 13, 2026
If you were still questioning whether iOS 26+ is for you, now is the time to make that call. Why? On December 12, 2025, Apple patched two WebKit zero‑day vulnerabilities linked to mercenary spyware and is now effectively pushing iPhone 11 and newer users toward iOS 26+, because that’s where the fixes and new memory ...