One day you might have tried to buy a train ticket online, only to find all tickets ‘sold out’ within seconds. You wonder, who could have bought them so quickly? The answer is surprising—it’s not humans, but robots or ‘bots’!
According to a recent report by cybersecurity firm Thales, bots now generate 51% of all internet traffic, with 72% of those being ‘malicious bots’.
This statistic comes from research in the Imperva Bad Bot Report 2025. For the first time, bot-driven traffic has surpassed human-driven traffic.
🤖 Enemy Bots in the Disguise of Friends
We know that some bots are harmless. For example: collecting data for price comparison websites, or scraping data to train generative AI models. But the real danger begins when this technology is used for stealing personal information, ticket manipulation, DDoS attacks, and other cybercrimes.
📊 2025 Internet Traffic Analysis:
- 51% of total web traffic is bot-driven
- 72% of these are malicious bots
- API attacks increased by up to 44%
- Credential stuffing increased by 40%
- Hong Kong: 24% victimized by bot attacks
- Australia: 18% victimized by bot attacks
Compared to 2024, malicious bot traffic has risen from 32% to 37% in 2025. The most significant among these bots were TikTok’s Bytespider Bot (54% of attacks), AppleBot (26%), ClaudeBot (13%), and ChatGPT-User (6%).
🔓 API: The Unstoppable Digital Gateway?
Thales reports that today’s cybercriminals are using AI platforms to find vulnerabilities in various organizations’ Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). An API is essentially a ‘backdoor’ into an organization’s internal business processes and data management.
In 2024, 44% of all sophisticated bot traffic targeted APIs. Financial institutions, e-commerce, and healthcare companies were the main targets.
Tim Chang, General Manager of Application Security at Thales, says,
“API business logic is not only powerful, but also presents big opportunities for cybercriminals. We are seeing a daily increase in harmful bots.”
Credential stuffing (using stolen usernames and passwords to try logging in) and brute-force attacks have increased by 40% since 2023, and by 54% since 2022.
⚔️ The First Shockwave of the AI War
The primary target of bot-driven attacks was Hong Kong, where 24% of bot attacks focused on its financial market. Australia placed third, with 18% of bot attacks, due to the country’s robust financial sector and e-commerce ecosystem.
Meanwhile, another report by Entrust states that 61% of Australian businesses suffer from identity theft, account fraud, and digital document forgery.
🛡️ What Can Be Done to Weather the Bot Storm?
Experts say it’s time for organizations to strengthen security measures, stay vigilant in API management, and increase awareness around generative AI usage.
In light of this report, it can be said—AI is no longer just a technology of the future, but a deep battlefield where self-defense is the only option.
Editorial Comment:
This alarming statistic about bot-driven internet traffic sends us an important message—unless we keep pace with technology, we can easily fall victim to it. Now is the time to further strengthen our digital awareness and security measures. The first step to self-defense is not to fear technology, but to use it wisely and with understanding.
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