Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR), which positions itself as a global leader in application security and delivery solutions for multicloud environments, today released its “2025 E-commerce Bot Threat Report”. The report found that automated bots – good and bad bots – accounted for 57% of e-commerce website traffic during the 2024 holiday season. It marks the first time that automated, non-DDOS generating bots drove more traffic than human shoppers, signalling a critical shift in the cyber security landscape for e-commerce providers and online retailers.
“Bad bots are no longer just based on simple scripts – they’re sophisticated, AI-enhanced agents capable of outsmarting traditional defences,” said Ron Meyran, vice-president of cyber threat intelligence at Radware. “E-commerce providers and online retailers that rely on conventional security measures will find themselves increasingly exposed, not just during the holidays but year-round.”
The report highlights major bot attack trends and real-world attack data observed during the 2024 online holiday shopping season. In addition, it offers insights into the distributed, multi-vector attacks e-commerce providers and retailers can expect to battle this year.
Key findings and insights
- AI-generated bots with human-like behaviour gain dominance: According to the report, bad bots made up 31% of total internet traffic during the last holiday season. Nearly 60% of the malicious traffic employed advanced behavioural techniques to evade traditional, signature-based detection. Combating these bots requires accurate AI-powered detection of attack patterns, including rotating IPs and identities, distributed attacks, CAPTCHA farm services and other advanced anomalies, without causing false positives.
- Mobile-focused attacks surge: Malicious bot traffic directed at mobile platforms rose 160% between the 2023 and 2024 holiday shopping seasons, representing a fundamental shift in attacker focus. Security strategies need to be shored up and tailored for vulnerable mobile platforms and attackers using more sophisticated techniques, including mobile emulators, mobile-specific proxies and headless browsers with mobile user-agent strings.
- Attacks leveraging distributed infrastructures and residential proxy networks increase: The proportion of holiday attack traffic originating from and blending in with ISP networks increased 32% between 2023 and 2024. Attackers are leveraging wider network and residential proxy services to evade rate-limiting, geo-based and IP-based blocking mechanisms, creating even greater mitigation challenges for security teams working without advanced, multi-layered protections.
- Co-ordinated multi-vector attack campaigns escalate: To maximise their success, attackers are targeting applications by combining bot attacks with web application vulnerability exploits, business logic attacks and API-focused attacks. Protecting already burdened security systems requires an integrated application security strategy that uses the latest threat intelligence and cross-correlates security threats across security modules.
Radware’s complete bot report can be downloaded here.
Radware will be addressing its new report and advanced protection strategies at the ITWeb Security Summit 2025 as a Gold sponsor. The event will take place at CTICC, Cape Town on 28 May 2025, and at Sandton Convention Centre in Sandton, Johannesburg, on 3-4 June 2025.
In Cape Town (booth 17), Radware will be exhibiting with its distributor Boston IT Solutions South Africa, a unit of Boston Limited Group and leading provider of custom IT systems and services across sub-Saharan Africa. Radware will be joined by South African cyber security specialist Obscure Technologies in Johannesburg (booth 23).
At the ITWeb Security Summit 2025, attendees can explore the latest threats facing African CISOs, CIOs, security specialists and risk officers; learn about emerging cyber security strategies in AI, blockchain, IOT, DevSecOps; and more. Click here to register.
About Radware
Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR) is a global leader in application security and delivery solutions for multicloud environments. The company’s cloud application, infrastructure and API security solutions use AI-driven algorithms for precise, hands-free, real-time protection from the most sophisticated web, application and DDOS attacks, API abuse and bad bots. Enterprises and carriers worldwide rely on Radware’s solutions to address evolving cyber security challenges and protect their brands and business operations while reducing costs. For more information, please visit the Radware website.
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