Much of the data traffic on the internet is due to malicious bots. That writes security guard Barracuda Networks in a report.
According to the company, about 40 percent of the total internet traffic comes from these ‘malicious bots’. According to the report, automated bots, including harmless bots from search engines, for example, together account for about 64 percent of all internet traffic.
But the majority of those bots are malicious, says Stefan van der Wal of Barracuda in a press release: “While some bots are benign, such as search engine crawlers or social network bots, this research shows that more than 60 percent of bots on performing malicious activities on a large scale.
If we let them run their course, these malicious bots can steal data, negatively impact website performance and even lead to a data breach.”
The report should show that most of those bots come from North America. About 67%, to be exact. Europe is in second place, followed by Asia. Barracuda assumes that this has to do with the amount of data centres and hosting services that can be used in these places.
Most bot traffic comes from two major public clouds: AWS and Microsoft Azure. Another interesting fact: the malicious bots follow office hours and are therefore more active on workdays.
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