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Help Net Security
November 23, 2023
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CYBERCRIMINALS TURN TO READY-MADE BOTS FOR QUICK ATTACKS



Bots and human fraud farms were responsible for billions of attacks in the H1 of
2023 and into Q3, according to Arkose Labs. These attacks comprised 73% of all
website and app traffic measured. In other words, almost three-quarters of
traffic to digital properties is malicious.



Researchers assessed the attacks across three primary attack vectors: basic
bots, intelligent bots, and human fraud farms. Fraudsters use these vectors to
launch attack types such as SMS toll fraud, web scraping, card testing,
credential stuffing, and more.

The analysis found bot attacks overall increased 167% in the H1 of 2023,
weighted heavily by a 291% increase in intelligent bots. These smart bots are
capable of complex, context-aware interactions.

In Q2 2023, there was a 202% increase in bots attempting to take over consumer
financial accounts, and a 164% increase in bots attempting to establish fake new
bank accounts. This trend continued going into Q3, which experienced a 30%
increase over the second quarter in fake new bank accounts.

Bad actors were attempting to drain account balances through ATO attacks, while
online fake accounts were most likely the preferred methods to launder illicit
proceeds gained from real-world crimes like human trafficking, drug dealing, or
weapon sales.


HUMAN FRAUD FARMS

The attacks, though, weren’t limited to bots. Research found that when
fraudsters’ bots are blocked, they pivot attacks to human fraud farms, which
increased 49% from Q1 to Q2 2023.

“Bot attacks aided by human fraud farms are about more than concert tickets and
high-priced sneakers. They can point to far darker activities,” said Kevin
Gosschalk, CEO of Arkose Labs.

“We’re seeing more attacks, using more intelligent bots, conducting more
sophisticated types of attacks. Fake account registration, credential stuffing,
scraping, SMS toll fraud–these are the types of attacks that fraudsters use as
the first steps to more harmful crimes. They lead to romance scams that groom
for human trafficking, money laundering from drug deals, or theft to fund
illegal weapons,” Gosschalk continued.

Two trends are highlighted as driving the increase in attack level: generative
AI (GenAI), and Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS).

During the past six months, Arkose Labs’ threat researchers have observed a
significant uptick of GenAI being used for content generation by bad actors who
are now able to write pristine phishing emails for Man-in-the-Middle attacks or
perfectly-worded responses on dating apps in their romance scams. In addition,
the researchers found attackers are using bots to scrape data from websites and
then using that data to tune their GenAI models.

GenAI has lowered the barrier to entry for attackers, which, in turn, has
quickly made it an imperative rather than an option for CISOs and their teams to
attend to.

An equally prodigious trend, Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) lowers the barrier
to entry for adversaries looking to commit cybercrime. CaaS vendors advertise
their questionably-legal services openly.

Anyone can reach out to these vendors to buy bots to circumvent security
measures or carry out an attack. Fraudsters with limited to zero technical
skills can then use fully automated bots at scale that cause widespread damage
to businesses and consumers.

Fraudsters no longer have to know how to code to deploy a sophisticated
volumetric bot attack. They can simply buy the bots off the web along with the
training they need and even tap into the sellers’ “customer” support.

Gosschalk added, “The massive rise of CaaS has completely changed the economics
for adversaries. It’s much cheaper to attack companies and the attacks are just
better because it’s a dev shop that is doing the attacks instead of just
individual cybercriminals.”


INDUSTRIES UNDER ATTACK

With so much traffic to digital properties made up of malicious attacks, Arkose
Labs researchers delved more deeply into the specific industries under attack.
Nearly every industry experienced an increase in the number of attacks.

The report lists the following as the industries that had more than 50% of
traffic coming from bad bots and details common attacks carried out by malicious
bots.

 * Travel and hospitality – 76% bad bots
 * Technology – 71% bad bots
 * Retail – 65% bad bots
 * Streaming – 61% bad bots
 * Gift cards – 57% bad bots





More about
 * Arkose Labs
 * attacks
 * bot
 * cybersecurity
 * fraud
 * report

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