What is a Bot?

A bot is an automated software application that performs repetitive tasks on a computer system, often over a network. It follows specific instructions to imitate human task completion, but is faster and removes human error. A bot can also run independently without human intervention. For example, bots can interact with websites, chat with site visitors, or scan through content. Although most bots are useful, outside parties design some bots with malicious intent. Organizations secure their systems to protect from malicious bots and use helpful bots for increased operational efficiency.

Good bots help companies increase productivity, scale operations, improve customer engagement, and increase conversion. Bots benefit businesses in many ways:

• Extend operation hours and provide services at any time
• Optimize existing resources and reach a wider audience
• Free up human employees from tedious, repetitive tasks
• Collect valuable data for analytics and business intelligence
• Perform tasks in a very short amount of time

Here are some examples of popular good bots used in enterprise applications today.

Chatbots

Chatbots simulate human conversation with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies. They can respond to queries on behalf of the customer support team and are often used as customer service bots. Highly intelligent chatbots, such as Amazon Alexa, can converse naturally with humans. These chatbots are also known as knowledge chatbots.

Web crawlers

A web crawler, also known as a spider bot, is a search engine bot that scans and indexes webpages on the internet. They help search engines to produce a better search experience by extracting data to understand the structure and relevance of web content, to index legitimate web pages on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Scrapers

Scrapers, or web scraping crawlers, scan and download specific content on the internet. For example, ecommerce businesses use scraper bots to monitor live product prices on different retail platforms. Marketers use scrapers with natural language capabilities to run sentiment analysis on social media feeds.

Shopping bots

Shopping bots scan product prices on multiple websites to help customers find the best deals. A shopping bot can also send personalized recommendations on instant messenger apps.

Monitoring bots

Monitoring bots limit your exposure to security incidents by constantly scanning your systems for bugs and malicious software. They alert you to unusual web activity by collecting and analyzing user interaction data and web traffic. Some monitoring bots can also work alongside other bots, such as chatbots, to ensure they perform as intended.

Transaction bots

Transaction bots ensure payment details are in order before finalizing transactions on ecommerce sites. They check credit card details and personal data accuracy during checkout. These bots are built with highly secure features to protect sensitive financial data.

A computer bot follows precise rules and instructions to accomplish its tasks. Once activated, bots can communicate with each other or with humans using interfaces and standard network communication protocols. They can operate continuously to perform programmed tasks with very little human intervention.

Both good and bad bots use various technologies to achieve their goals. For example, chatbots use deep learning technologies that can include text-to-speech, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing to simulate human conversation and dialogue. On the other hand, web crawlers send HTTP requests to websites to read the underlying content. An HTTP request is a communication protocol that browsers use to send and receive data.

Malicious bots, including malware bots, perform activities that create security risks for organizations. For example, they might disrupt operations, create disadvantages, send out unwanted emails, or attempt unauthorized access to sensitive data. Here are some common types of bad bots.

Spambots

Spambots scrape the internet for email addresses, turn the gathered data into email lists, and send spam messages in large batches. Alternatively, a spambot can create false accounts and post messages on forums and social media. These bots can entice a human user to click on a compromised website or download unwanted files.

Ticketing bots

Ticketing bots scan websites to buy tickets at the lowest price, only to later resell the tickets at a higher price to make a profit. The process is automated and leaves the impression that a human is purchasing the ticket. Although ticketing bots are regulated in some countries, the practice is considered unethical.

DDoS bad bots

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) bots are malicious programs used to perform a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to affect the availability of a targeted system, such as a website or application, to legitimate human users. Typically, a DDoS bot attacks a site by generating large volumes of packets or requests that may overwhelm the target system.

Botnet

A botnet is a group of malicious bots that work together in a coordinated manner from a centralized control station. The group performs tasks that require a high volume of computing power and memory. In order to save costs, bot creators may attempt to install bots on network-connected devices that belong to others. In doing this, they can control the bots remotely and plan to utilize computing power without paying for it.

Click fraud bots

Click fraud bots use artificial intelligence to mimic human behavior to perform ad fraud. For example, a fraud bot automatically clicks on paid ads with plans to increase the ad revenue for the publisher. These fake clicks increase marketing expenditure without leading to real customers.

File-sharing bots

A file-sharing bot records frequent search terms on applications, messengers, or search engines. It then provides recommendations with unwanted links to malicious files or websites.

Social media bots

Social media bots, or social bots, generate false social media activity such as fake accounts, follows, likes, or comments. By imitating human activity on social media platforms, they spam content, boost popularity, or spread misinformation.

Download bots

Download bots are bots programmed to download software or applications automatically and boost download numbers. This creates a false impression of popularity and helps the application rise in ranking charts. By using download bots, an application publisher expects to gain more visibility and attract real human subscribers.

Malicious bot activity can significantly disrupt your digital business services and negatively impact any authorized users attempting to interact with your company.

Bad bots are specifically designed to overwhelm your systems and create digital strain. Large-scale bot attacks may prevent legitimate users from accessing your services. In other cases, attackers may create bots that focus on account compromise. They may use credential stuffing to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts, potentially locking the accounts inadvertently and frustrating real users.

Malicious actors can also deploy web scraping bots to extract content from web pages and harvest email addresses. The former may be used in other cyberattacks, like spam websites and phishing pages, and the latter could be used in credential attacks. Other spam bots may even create fake social media accounts or sign up for accounts on your business site to drain resources and consume bandwidth.

Botnet traffic reduces how well your website or applications can work, increasing operational costs while preventing any real person from actually using them.

Malicious bots require targeted approaches to detect because they are frequently developed to evade humans and computers. Consider these approaches to protect your IT systems against bad bots:

• Instill security awareness among employees, including training employees to avoid clicking on unknown or suspicious links in emails
• Use rate limiting to avoid bot-based high traffic events
• Use anti-malware programs and run regular scans to detect and isolate bots in computer systems
• Install a firewall to help prevent bots from accessing your computer
• Strengthen bot protection and advanced threat detection software to prevent bots, such as using Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats
• Use CAPTCHA, a challenge-response test that allows web servers to tell humans apart from bots, to help stop distributed denial of service (DDoS) and spam bots from disrupting web servers
• Enforce strong endpoint security policies and regulate the sharing of portable storage drives
• Use strong and non-repetitive passwords for different user accounts

Internet traffic to your applications can come from humans or bots. Blocking all bot traffic is not the right security approach, as several bots are useful. For example, allowing certain web crawlers is essential to ensure webpages appear in search engine results. Bot management is a strategic approach that helps companies separate good bot traffic from malicious bot activity. Although malicious bots are harmful to computer systems, good bots help to enhance productivity, cost efficiency, and customer experience.

Bot manager software

Bot management involves using bot manager software to classify bots and enforce policies according to bot behavior. Bot managers use different methods to detect if a bot is important or not. The simplest bot detection method uses static analysis to categorize bots based on web activities. Some bot managers use CAPTCHA to separate malicious bot traffic from human users. Meanwhile, advanced bot management solutions involve machine learning technologies that study the behavioral patterns of computer activities.

AWS provides several solutions that help companies to benefit from good bots and reduce risks from malicious bots.

• Amazon Lex is an AI chat builder that allows users to interact with any application using natural language voice or chat. Use Amazon Lex to build and deploy conversational AI interfaces for any application.
• AWS WAF Bot Control gives you visibility and control over pervasive bot traffic that can consume excess resources, skew metrics, cause downtime, or perform other undesired activities. Use the Bot Control managed rule group to block or rate-limit pervasive bots, such as scrapers, scanners, and crawlers, or allow common bots, such as status monitors and search engines.
• AWS Shield protects networks and applications by identifying network security configuration issues and defending applications against active web exploitation and distributed denial of service (DDoS) events.

Get started with bot management on AWS by creating a free AWS account today.