This extraordinary surge in web traffic? It’s probably driven by bots

SINGAPORE—Unwanted and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven bots now account for a significant share of internet traffic across the Asia-Pacific region, as malicious actors capitalize on high levels of AI and technology adoption.

This is according to the latest security research by US-listed cloud company Fastly Inc., unveiled here on Tuesday.

Fastly’s threat insights report, generated from more than 20 trillion requests across its network, finds that 26 percent of traffic in Japan and the Asia-Pacific is bot-driven. About 19 percent of such requests are classified as malicious.

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“What we saw is most bots that we see that are increasing quarter over quarter are unwanted,” says Kelly Shortridge, chief product officer at Fastly. “That’s either malicious or it’s something that doesn’t benefit our customers’ business.”

By comparison, the global average stands at 29 percent of internet traffic attributable to bots, with 25 percent of them considered unwanted.

Shortridge says bot management, whether of unwanted or wanted bots, has now become a “business decision.” Companies seek control over which automated traffic they allow to access their platforms and content.

The report also points to the growing sophistication of bot activity alongside the rise of AI.

Shortridge notes that some AI bots now employ techniques previously associated with cybercriminals, such as using headless browsers to evade detection while scraping or retrieving content.

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Additionally, Fastly finds that nearly all, or 99 percent, of fetcher requests come from OpenAI, the company that developed the large language model chatbot ChatGPT.

Fetcher requests are automated requests made by bots that retrieve specific pieces of information from a website.

Commerce, tech most vulnerable

Across industries, bot traffic remains especially concentrated in transaction-heavy industries, such as commerce and financial services.

In Japan and the Asia-Pacific, Fastly observes a notable concentration of attacks on high-technology companies, particularly those operating software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and cloud infrastructure businesses.

“I think this really speaks to Japan being an innovation hub,” Shortridge says. This means that “high technology companies are delivering more value for customers, which probably makes themselves more targeted by AI companies,” she adds.

Globally, Fastly identifies commerce and education as the most targeted sectors.

A Nasdaq-listed company, Fastly operates across all continents, with its Asian footprint extending to the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and China. INQ