An online site used to book COVID-19 vaccines in the London area was attacked by bots, as thousands attempted to register for their vaccine appointments. According to the London Free Press, just before 10:15 a.m., the Middlesex-London Health Unit tweeted the booking system had experienced challenges. “We have addressed the issues and will continue to monitor the booking system closely,” the organization claimed.
Most bot mitigation solutions rely on rules and risk scores, which use information from the past, even when paired with advanced machine learning or AI capabilities. Since bot operators are continually inventing new ways to evade detection, using historical data fails to detect and stop bots never seen before. As a result, retailers and e-commerce companies can’t keep up with the evolving nature of bot operators’ techniques, tools, and tactics. This is evidenced by the record volume of “Grinch” bots that we saw over the holidays.
A new report by LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Cybercrime Report covering July 2019 through December 2019, reveals how fraud has increasingly become borderless on a global scale.
Where disinformation was once communicated by telegram, the modern version of vast, coordinated campaigns are now disseminated through social media with bots, Twitterbots, and bot farms—at a scale humans could never perform. Now, disinformation campaigns can be lodged by a government to influence stock prices in another country, or by a private company to degrade brand presence and consumer confidence. What’s worse is that bots can facilitate these campaigns en masse.
