Are you tired of unnecessary bots on your system? Well, a plausible solution to this perennial problem is by incorporating an anti-bot system. Anti-bots are processes or technologies that are put in place to prevent bad bots which can harm your system. Anti-bots are essential since they detect bad bots with the help of sophisticated machine learning logarithms. These algorithms work tirelessly to update data related to how bad bots function and devising new methods to detect their presence. Having these regular updates within your system creates a firewall to prevent any cyberattacks.
The Common Cybersecurity Threats Caused by Bots
Over the years, malicious or harmful bots have been targeting businesses in all sectors of the economy using various automated techniques. They include the following.
Credential Stuffing
Credential stuffing and cracking is the most common cybersecurity weapon of choice for selected hackers. They are readily available for download, with the most preferred being Sentry MBA. Over the years, Credential stuffing or Cracking tools has facilitated an easy passage for ATO attacks against any preferred website with just a few mouse clicks. Moreover, these recent and upcoming attack vectors are believed to use sophisticated actors to compromise a customer’s transaction with minimal tracing capability.
Combining these sophisticated actors and leaked or stolen databases have led to increased mechanized credential stuffing attacks. This explains why there has been an upsurge in cybersecurity cases. All an attacker needs is to generate a security data risk to a preferred organization that has been pre-configured as the target, a combined list of usernames/ emails and their passwords. They would also require a proxy list of all open proxies to channel traffic in that direction to evade IP banning and escape the traps of law enforcement agencies.
Anti-Bots Techniques for Preventing Credential Stuffing
Use Strong and Unique Passwords
Among the prolific ways to battle ATO attacks are using strong passwords and advising your users to use unique passwords. Moreover, you should inform your users to use a single unique password for one account. The general thumb rule calls for using a 10-character long password and should contain uppercase, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
Use of CAPTCHA
Most brute and ATO attacks rely on bots to function; hence incorporating capture is essential to deter these bots from working. However, CAPTCHA has its falls which include the following. Thus, you should only use it in unique or strategic scenarios and require reinforcement with other methods,
- Various CAPTCHA farm services require a human worker to provide a solution to the CAPTCHA before passing it to the bot hence rendering the CAPTCHA ineffective.
- CAPTCHA is also known to spoil the user experience. Therefore, use them only when necessary.
Use of Fingerprints
Initially, system administrators could prevent credential stuffing attacks by blocking IP addresses after several failed login attempts. Through technological advancements, sophisticated bots can maneuver through tons of IP addresses hence the introduction of fingerprints. Fingerprints are more advanced since they can detect if the traffic is a device signature, legitimate user, the coded language and the operating system. Furthermore, with fingerprints, any unmatched signature warrants the system to ask the user for additional authentication methods to verify their identity.
Application of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
They are also referred to as 2-factor authentication, and they are essential in requesting the user to provide additional identity information before accessing the site. Even though MFAs are effective in combating ATO attacks, repeated MFA requests can easily damage the account’s user experience (UX) and may cause an upsurge in the bounce rate.
Card Cracking/Stuffing
Card Cracking or Stuffing refers to the illegal use of debit or credit cards by unauthorized personnel or carders for their gain. Carders usually carry out multiple payment authorization attempts to validate the stolen cards before conducting their planned fraudulent transactions. Availability of bots is usually an added advantage to carders during a carding activity. Bots usually help the carder try various values quickly to determine the missing start and expiry dates and security codes for a particular payment card information.
How to Detect Carding in eCommerce Platforms
Accurate detection of carding can be a daunting task since they are very similar to the standard and authorized cardholder transactions. Moreover, carding ATO attacks is even more challenging to detect if several carders committed fraud. However, you can still detect these fraudulent transactions in the following ways.
- Attempted payments with an empty cart in the account
- A sudden increase in unsuccessful payment trials
- Conflicting usage of payment steps
How to Mitigate Carding in eCommerce
Businesses, retailers and consumers can use the following methods.
- Abolishing/removing guest checkouts to enhance the multi-factor authentication systems
- Implementation of a real-time bot protection solution to monitor all card activities
- In the event of an attack, quickly notify your customers to change their credentials and other login information.
- You can secure your business with credible engines that will allow you to audit user behaviors and detect any malicious transactions. Upon detections, the engine will provide you with mechanisms to shut down any ATO carding attacks and protects your business with accuracy and incredible speeds.
The Types of Bots to Watch Out
- Click Bots: They are designed to generate fraudulent clicks on online advertisements that interfere with the cost of advertising. This particular bot can cause significant damage to advertisers who run PPC models and web publishers.
- Download Bots: They function similarly to the click bots. However, they add a fake download count. For instance, download bots can download eBooks from websites that will interfere with your website’s conversion data.
- Spy bots: These types of bots monitor sensitive information in your system such as financial data, personal information and address and can easily leak it out to hackers.
- Spam Bots: As their name suggests, these bots usually spam on unwanted and can provide linkage to malicious content from websites that run scams and phishing. Eventually, these bots can easily damage your website’s SEO performance.
Conclusion
Using anti-bot systems and techniques should be the priority once your website is up and running. Furthermore, you should consider investing in an effective anti-bot system to protect your website from various cyber-attacks vectors. Remember, anti-bots are essential to allow smooth functioning of the site while still allowing the authorized and legitimate consumer users and clean bots to access your website.