Threat Groups:

Invalid Bot Activity:

A bot is a software program that performs automated, sometimes repetitive, predefined tasks. Bots typically imitate or replicate human behavior. These non-human tools can be used for malicious purposes, such as false-clicks or other types of fraud.

Bot activity is detected by analyzing network / browser and more parameters and characteristics, and identifying fingerprints of non-human activity.

Regardless of why a specific bot was created, it is not a real user and therefore cannot turn into a customer and cannot contribute to your customer acquisition efforts in a meaningful way.

Invalid Malicious Activity:

Malicious activity is a set of, excessive, non-standard or false identity actions performed by users with the intent of damaging your online performance.

These types of activities that have a harmful impact on your digital efforts are detected by analyzing the user’s behavior and characteristics. Sometimes malicious users are competitors who want to run your campaigns out of budget or give you misleading data. Malicious users could also be trying to steal information or hijack accounts.

Threat Types:

Invalid Bot Activity Threat Types:

• Scrapers: Scrapers are used for content scraping from web applications. A web scraper extracts underlying code as well as stored data. This extracted information can be used then to retrieve business intelligence, to replicate the web service and more.
• Automation Tools: Automation tools are used to perform automatic activity usually at scale in a repetitive and fast manner. Such activity can be sometimes executed for malicious purposes such as false-clicks and fraudulent display of web-placed ads.
• Malicious Bots: A malicious bot is a malware designed to perform a variety of attack patterns.

Invalid Malicious Activity Threat Types:

• Excessive Rate Limit:An excessive number of clicks on ads that are performed by users posing as legitimate users but without any intention of following through and converting.

• Disabled JavaScript:When JavaScript is disabled in the user browser, certain features on a website might not work or even the website might not operate completely. Users with disabled JS deliberately don’t intend to interact with the website the way it was designed.

• Behavioral Anomalies: Behavioral anomalies is a method of detecting individuals with hostile intentions by observing their behavior and activities on digital assets.
• Click Farm: A click farm is an organized fraud that leverages tools and large groups of humans to manually click on paid ads online. Click farms have people clicking on ads with no intent of normally converting.
• False Representation: False Representation such as User Agent Spoofing is the situation where the user information is modified to hide and lie about its real characteristics and identity. It is most often seen with bots trying to hide their tracks, but some malicious human users will occasionally engage in this way as well.
• Disabled Cookies: Disabling the browser’s cookies is common with bots and fraudsters. Users that have their cookies disabled will not be able to use most of the website’s functionality. This means that these users would not be able to progress within the funnel and most likely won’t convert.
• Click Hijacking: Click Hijacking is an attack vector that tricks a user into clicking a web element which is invisible or disguised as another element. This can cause users to unwittingly download malware, visit malicious web pages, provide credentials or sensitive information, transfer money, or purchase products online.
• Network Anomalies: User traffic that includes one or more attributes (e.g., IP, user cookie) associated with known irregular patterns, such as non-disclosed auto-refresh traffic, duplicate clicks, and attribute mismatch.
• Malicious User Input: The user input includes validation on different form fields (Email and phone). Malicious input is likely not associated with a real human user.