What does it mean by BOT?

• Introduction
• What are BOTS?
• How do BOTS work?
• What are the Types of BOTS?
• What makes a BOT Bad?
• How to Detect BAD BOT?
• Why do HACKERS use BOTS?
• Computer Bot vs Internet Bot
• Advantages and Disadvantages of BOTS
• How to avoid harmful BOTS?
• Conclusion

What exactly is a bot? Many individuals’ repetitive activities have decreased because of technological advancements. The repetitive activities (also called ‘automation’) are programmed to run on their own, without human intervention. In comparison to people, these automated algorithms have been shown to be more efficient, dependable, and speedy. Let’s have a look at what ‘Bots’ really are and more!

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What are BOTS?

A bot, short for a robot and often known as an internet bot, is a computer program that acts as an agent for a user or another program or simulates human behavior. Bots are automated, which means they follow instructions without requiring a human user to set them up manually every time. Bots time and time again are functioning to produce actions matching to human users. They often do repetitive operations at a significantly faster rate than human users.

Some instances are as follows:

• Web crawlers utilized by search engines for better indexing
• Customer service chatbots
• Virtual assistants to aid in increased productivity

How do bots work?

A bot can be used by an organization or a person to execute repetitive work that would otherwise be performed by a human. Bots are also a lot faster than humans at these jobs. Bots can do beneficial tasks, but they can also be malevolent and infect computers with viruses.

Some bots are helpful, such as search engine bots that index material using machine learning or customer service bots that answer inquiries. Other bots, on the other hand, make it easier to attack websites and mobile apps. These malicious bots are programmed to break into user accounts, search the internet for contact information to send spam, and participate in other damaging activities that result in account fraud and abuse.

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Some Interesting facts about BOTS:

• In Asia, the Indian market is the largest and fastest expanding. The market for Robots in India was valued at 4,564 in 2018, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.3 percent from 2019 to 2024.
• By 2024, global industrial robotics shipments are estimated to reach over 518,000! (Source: Statista.com)
• According to Modor Intelligence, the Global Robot Market will surpass USD 74.1 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 17.45% from 2021 to 2026!

What are the types of BOTS?

Bots come in a variety of shapes and sizes, each with its own set of aims and objectives. The following are some examples of popular bots:

• Chatbots: Bots that replicate human communication by replying to certain words with pre-programmed replies are known as chatbots. Virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant are more modern instances of chatbots.
• Social Media Bots: Bots that operate on social media sites are known as social bots. These bots, which are sometimes referred to as opinion bots, impact user conversations on social media sites.
• Shopbots: Many of these tools scour the internet for the greatest price on a product a user is considering purchasing. Shopify store owners may use other shopbots, such as the Shopify chatbot, to automate marketing and customer service.
• Knowbots: These apps gather information for a user by accessing websites automatically and retrieving information that satisfies particular criteria. Knowbots was created as a computerized assistant to help with repetitive duties.
• Crawlers or spiders: These bots, also known as web crawlers, examine websites and collect material for indexing in search engines like Google and Bing. These are similar to crawlers, except they are used to collect data and retrieve relevant material from websites. Web crawlers (Googlebots) are bots that search the content of webpages all across the Internet.
• Watch Bots: These can be used to keep track of a website’s or system’s health.
• Bots for transactions: These bots are intended to make operations that would usually be completed by a human over the phone, such as blocking a stolen credit card or verifying a bank’s hours of operation, easier.
• Bots that scrape material, transmit spam, or carry out credential stuffing attacks are known as malicious bots (bad bots.)

What Makes a Bot Bad?

Bad bots are designed to carry out a range of nefarious tasks that can result in data breaches, identity theft, missed client conversions, and other negative consequences for digital organizations and web users. For example, bad bots can help fraudsters hack into online accounts using stolen usernames and passwords through the ATO attack – account takeover attack.

Bad bots can be from competitors seeking to rake content from websites including pricing figures, competitive pitches, and breaking news articles. They may be used to spam forums with messages, generate millions of bogus leads, run abandonment campaigns on e-commerce checkout portals, manipulate marketing statistics, and steal shop credits and gift cards, among other things. Bots can cause latency and slow down a website’s performance for genuine users when they make thousands of visits.

How can you know if your computer has been infected with bots?

• Your computer continues to crash for no apparent cause.
• The settings have been altered, and there is no way to change them back.
• Applications that used to function without a hitch now work in fits and spurts.
• The machine does not shut down correctly or takes a long time to shut down.
• Your internet connection has slowed to a halt.
• You didn’t download any of the browser’s components.
• Programs with cryptic names or descriptions are displayed in Windows Task Manager.
• Programs that used to load fast are now taking a long time to start.
• Even if you are not using a web browser, pop-up windows and adverts show.
• Updates for the operating system are not available for download.
• When the fan is turned on, it goes into overdrive.
• Friends and relatives say they received emails from you, but you never sent them.

Why do Hackers use BOTS?

• To steal personal and financial information

Botnets may be used by hackers to transmit phishing or other schemes to consumers in order to defraud them of their money. They may also collect data from bot-infected computers and exploit it to steal identities and incur debts or purchases in the user’s name.

• Attempting to compromise reputable online services

Botnets may be used by criminals to launch DoS and DDoS assaults, which overwhelm a legitimate service or network with a massive amount of traffic. The volume may significantly impede the company’s service or network’s capacity to respond, or it may completely overload and shut down the service or network.

• Extortion of funds from victims

Extortion (pay or have your site taken down) or payments by parties interested in causing damage to a firm or network are two ways DoS assaults generate revenue. “Hackertivists” – hackers with political goals — as well as foreign military and intelligence agencies are among these organizations.

• To profit from zombie and botnet networks

Other criminals who wish to distribute spam, frauds, phishing, steal identities, or target legitimate websites and networks may rent their botnets from cybercriminals.

What is the difference between a computer bot and an internet bot?

Computer bots and internet bots are simply digital instruments that may be used for good or harm, just like any other tool.
Good bots do important activities, while bad bots pose a threat and may be used to hack, spam, spy, disrupt, and compromise websites of all sizes. Computer bots are thought to account for up to half of all internet traffic today, doing functions such as automating customer support, replicating human conversation on social networks, assisting corporations with content searches, and assisting with search engine optimization.

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Advantages and disadvantages of bots

There are several benefits to utilizing bots, as well as drawbacks, such as the hazards that other bots may pose.

Bots have the following potential advantages:

• They are feasible for 24 hours a day
• They are brisk at repetitive tasks
• They save time for customers and clients
• They are customizable, and they provide a better user experience
• They can reach a large number of people via messenger apps
• They are adaptable
• They help businesses save money on labor
• Using messaging applications, businesses may contact a vast number of consumers
• They may be used for a variety of things

The following are some disadvantages:

• Humans are in the need to supervise and mediate the bots
• Cannot be programmed to execute certain activities without causing confusion among users
• Users can make it malicious, and it can be used for spam

How can a harmful bot activity be avoided?

Detecting bot traffic is more difficult than it has ever been. Bot creators are always coming up with new ways to get around the basic security measures that most businesses still use. Preventing harmful bots is the best defense. A bot infection may be avoided by following good cybersecurity procedures. Bots can be avoided by doing the following:

• Anti-malware software should be installed: Malicious bots come under the malware group. Antimalware software can assist in automating defense against this danger.
• Use a bot manager to keep track of your bots: A bot manager is usually included in a web application security framework. These categorize web requests and allow some bots to be used while prohibiting others. The following are two bot management strategies:
• The number of queries from the same IP address is limited by IP rate limitation.
• CAPTCHAs utilize riddles to ensure that the user seeking the information is a human and not a computer.
• Make use of a firewall: Firewalls may be set up to restrict bots and block specific types of traffic depending on IP address or behavior.
• Only click on URLs that you know are safe: Spam or harmful links may be sent over email by bots. To prevent receiving a dangerous link from a bot, only click on links from a reputable source.
• Password security is important: Bots can be used to hack into user accounts by brute-forcing weaker passwords. This may be avoided by using a strong password and updating it periodically.
• Software should be updated: Security patches in software updates can assist guard against bots.

Conclusion

Bots are meant to be malevolent or non-malicious depending on the reason for their development. The reason for the bot’s development is decided by cybercriminals. They might be as basic as increasing the number of followers on a social media account or as complex as delivering malware. Bots are becoming a large part of our everyday lives, often taking the place of humans. As a result, it is necessary to be aware of bots and the ways in which they might cause harm.

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