Malicious bot traffic surges 124%, overwhelming website defenses

Per Silicon Angle, a new report from bot protection company DataDome SAS reveals a significant surge in malicious automated traffic, which grew 124% between July 2025 and June 2026, far outpacing human traffic growth. The report highlights that many popular websites struggle to block even basic bot activity.

The "State of Bot & Agent Security Report" analyzed over a trillion requests, finding that scraping accounted for 70.9% of malicious bot traffic, increasing by 185.2%. This surge is partly attributed to data harvesting for AI model training. Scalping bots, used to buy limited inventory for resale, saw a 290.7% increase, while fake account creation rose 34.5%. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks grew 39.9%, peaking at over 2 billion requests in a single day. AI traffic also increased by 82.3%, with Meta and OpenAI-affiliated bots being prominent. Notably, AI bots are increasingly targeting login and transaction pages, with login page requests up significantly.

A June test found that 65.3% of tested websites could not stop any of the 10 bot types used, with telecommunications sites being the most vulnerable. The report emphasizes the growing challenge of distinguishing beneficial AI activity from harmful bot behavior, as current defenses often rely on binary choices.

Source: Silicon Angle