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Grinch Bots strike again: defending your holidays from cyber threats

Back in 2021, we covered the antics of Grinch Bots and how the combination of proposed regulation and technology could prevent these malicious programs from stealing holiday cheer.

Fast-forward to 2024 — the Stop Grinch Bots Act of 2021 has not passed, and bots are more active and powerful than ever, leaving businesses to fend off increasingly sophisticated attacks on their own. During Black Friday 2024, Cloudflare observed:

• 29% of all traffic on Black Friday was Grinch Bots. Humans still accounted for the majority of all traffic, but bot traffic was up 4x from three years ago in absolute terms. 

• 1% of traffic on Black Friday came from AI bots. The majority of it came from Claude, Meta, and Amazon. 71% of this traffic was given the green light to access the content requested. 

• 63% of login attempts across our network on Black Friday were from bots. While this number is high, it was down a few percentage points compared to a month prior, indicating that more humans accessed their accounts and holiday deals. 

• Human logins on e-commerce sites increased 7-8% compared to the previous month. 

These days, holiday shopping Continue reading