Sporting Fans Heavily Targeted by Bad Bots This Summer

guest · Aug 13, 2021

Sporting Fans Heavily Targeted by Bad Bots This Summer
August 12, 2021
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/sporting-fans-bad-bots-summer/

Bad bot activity rose on sporting and betting sites during sporting events such as Tour De France, EURO 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics.

Imperva Research Labs has revealed that punters were left at risk of account takeover (ATO) attacks, leaving their digital wallets vulnerable to exploitation. Alarmingly, during the Tokyo Olympics, the company saw a spike in search engine impersonators during the first week and by week two, it grew by 103% above average.

“Bad bots typically masquerade as legitimate users to remain undetected,” explained Imperva researchers in a blog post. “Incoming traffic to sporting sites saw an unusual 48% increase in Yahoo impersonators, 66% increase in Baidu impersonators and 88% increase in Google impersonators.
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In the run up to the EURO 2020 football tournament, the organization monitored a 96% year-on-year increase in bot traffic on global sporting sites. ATO attacks also spiked by two or three times the daily average on the days when England played.

A similar trend was spotted at the beginning of the Tour De France—bot activity on sporting and gambling sites spiked 52% as the race was scheduled to begin.

“Bot comment spammers were pervasive, with traffic increasing 62%,” the blog post stated.
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“Gambling sites are a lucrative target for account takeover attacks because user profiles often have financial information or even funds stored,” explained the blog post. “A successful account takeover can result in financial fraud, theft of personal data or sensitive business information.”

“The bad bot problem is increasingly complex as automated web activity accounted for more than a quarter of all web traffic in 2020,” Imperva added in its blog post.
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Imperva Research Labs: Game On: A Summer of Cybercrime Reveals Evolving Bot Threat

Fans around the world clamored online, and even in-person, over the past several weeks to enjoy the thrill of competition. From the Tour De France and EURO 2020 tournament in June to the recent Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, fans were eager to cheer on their nations and make a little money in the process, too.

As fans placed their wagers on individual matches through online betting sites, Imperva Research Labs noticed a suspicious rise in bot activity on both sporting and betting sites, coinciding with these global sporting events. In addition to bot-driven comment spamming and content scraping, Imperva also monitored a rise in account takeover (ATO) attacks — designed to break into accounts and gain access to gamblers’ digital wallets — in the weeks leading up to and during these events.
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