According to experts, the share of malicious bots has been growing for a long time, but the pandemic has accelerated this process. Russia is among the top five countries in terms of the volume of generated unwanted traffic.
According to data from Barracuda Networks, 64% of Internet traffic in January-June 2021 was generated by automated tools. So, 39% of traffic was generated by malicious bots, 25% were generated by useful bots, 36% were generated by humans.
Attackers use bots for DDoS attacks, brute-force passwords from personal accounts, and create phishing sites. Malicious automated programs primarily threaten online stores and marketplaces.
The overwhelming majority of malicious traffic - 67% - is generated in North America. Europe is in second place with an indicator of 22%, Asia is in third place with 8%. The remaining 3% are in Oceania, South America and Africa.
According to Group-IB, Russia is among the top 5 countries in terms of the number of IP addresses from which unwanted traffic comes. "In August 2021, the traffic of bots for DDoS attacks in Russia increased up to 10 times compared to other months," added Olga Baranova, Director of Orange Business Services in Russia and the CIS.
According to Barracuda Networks, in the first half of 2021, malicious bots were most often directed to the websites and services of e-commerce organizations, as well as authorization pages where login and password are required.
According to Alexei Pavlov, Deputy Director of the Solar JSOC Cyber Attack Monitoring and Response Center at Rostelecom-Solar, in Russia, bots are primarily used to attack e-commerce, banks, and public services.
However, experts have recently observed the activity of bots in the energy industry, housing and communal services, medicine, education and entertainment.
Up to 15 Russian financial organizations were subjected to a large-scale cyberattack in August and September of this year.
The first deputy head of the Information Security Department of the Bank of Russia, Artem Sychev, said that 10-15 Russian financial organizations that serve e-commerce were subjected to cyber attacks in August and early September.
According to him, it was several DDoS attacks. “Most of these attacks were repelled in an automated mode by the means that financial organizations have,” Sychev noted.
Financial CERT (Financial Sector Computer Emergency Response Team, a special division of the Bank of Russia) also helped to cope with the attacks, which quickly notified banks about the attacks and connected telecom operators to solving problems. They helped to quickly redirect traffic and enable tools that filter malicious traffic.
According to Sychev, the attacks were serious, but the attackers failed to disrupt the performance of credit institutions.
“But, nevertheless, there is such a risk of dependence on monopoly service providers for financial organizations,” he added.
“The events that took place in Russia in August and early September and were associated with massive DDoS attacks clearly showed that it is not enough for us, as the financial industry, to exchange information with each other, we need to do this with telecom operators, as they are the basis for interaction between customers and financial organizations. How quickly we can interact between financial organizations and telecom operators largely depends on how quickly we can respond to the attacks that occur in the financial sector, and how quickly we can cope with these attacks,” Sychev added.
On September 2, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov said that the bank had successfully repelled the world's most powerful DDoS attack on the financial sector.