Bot - What is, Benefits, and Examples

Nowadays, we automate as much as possible to avoid manual tasks. One advancement in robotics is the development of bots. In this blog, we will explore the bots and their types and also learn how you can protect yourself from these bots.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Bots
• Types of Bots
• Benefits of Bots
• Risks and Threats from Bots
• Common Bots Attacks
• Bot Detection and Protection
• Conclusion

Introduction to Bots

Bot is short for ‘robot’. It is an automated software program that performs repetitive and predefined tasks over the Internet at a much higher rate than human beings.

Bots can benefit your organization, but they are also capable of harming you. Once a bot enters your system, it is quite difficult to get rid of them. However, it is more of a trouble to spot the bot itself. The bots can hide in the shadows of the affected computer. Based on usage, we primarily developed two kinds of bots: computer bots and internet bots.

Computer Bots and Internet Bots

Computer Bots and Internet Bots are tools that can be used digitally for good purposes as well as bad.

Bots gather information for businesses’ benefit. Bot usage has resulted in integrated AI in today’s businesses, such as automatic interaction with instant messaging, instant relay chat, or assorted other web interfaces. Bots also made the futuristic idea of dynamic websites possible.

Bots are also used for malicious purposes, such as gathering passwords, logging keystrokes, obtaining financial information, relaying spam, capturing and analyzing packets, launching DoS attacks, opening backdoors on the infected computer, and exploiting backdoors opened by worms and viruses.

Types of Bots

There are several types of internet bots, and the following are a few examples:

1. ChatBots

Chatbots are predominantly used in businesses for customer service purposes. Chatbots may come with limitations. Chatbots are the type of bots that need constant input, and during the course of business, it takes time for the bot computer program to understand how human beings interact. However, several technologies indeed are helpful in training this type of bot technology.

2. Spider Bots

Spider bots are used for the bot’s “crawling” functionality. The bot’s crawling capacity is utilized to follow hyperlinks to crawl the web for indexing and retrieval of web content. This type of bot is very useful for downloading images, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to enable the processing of the retrieved contents.

3. Scraper Bots

Scraper bots are similar to spider bots. Scraper bots are very useful for reading data from web pages. This bot’s functionality is handy in data harvesting.

4. Video Bots

Video bots are primarily used in video games. Such video bots increase your overall gaming experience by enhancing the characters. With the presence of video bots, the character would appear more life-like.

5. Download Bots

Download bots are also known as double-edged bots. On the one hand, they help developers increase the number of apps that are downloaded. On the other hand, download bots can be a breeding ground for DoS attacks. Generally, automated scripts that cause the automatic download of software or apps on smartphones are collectively called download bots.

6. Social Media Bots

The majority of the world’s population has an account on various social media platforms. Social media bots facilitate various actions on the platform. They enable the creation of accounts and increase their follower base. Social media bots are popularly used to influence public sentiment and advocate a certain line of thought.

As an extension to the understanding of what a bot is, the types of bots would have helped you understand the intricate and helpful nature of bots. It is now time to understand the various advantages and disadvantages of bots.

Benefits of Bots

• With the correct implementation of bots, you can clearly understand your customer base. Currently, businesses implement interactive bots (known as conversational bots) to learn about various aspects of customers, such as feedback and common queries regarding the business. Bots can effectively boost your business by suggesting customers try out various products in the flow of conversation. Since the personalized recommendation comes in a friendly tone, the percentile of purchases will increase by several percentages.
• Customers might check out your website at any time of the day/night. Due to the overwhelming customer response, your customer service executive might take some time to respond. In several marketing studies, it has been said that businesses lose customers due to late responses. To fill the gap in response, an AI bot can be implemented. The bot will keep your customer informed and entertained till your customer service executive can take over the chat.
• It is important to note that several businesses have started to implement a complete AI bot in the customer service department. This increases the productivity of the customer service executive as well, who now can focus on other tasks that mandatorily require his/her expertise.

Risks and Threats from Bots

• One of the major downsides of a bot is that your customers will not have a “human-touch” experience. For instance, if your customers ask a new question where there is no information fed to the bot system, the response would be weird.
•  Bot systems take a lot of time to set up and implement. Needless to say, the more advanced the bot system is, the more pricey it will be.
• The bot system should be maintained properly to ensure it runs smoothly.
• Bots can be used for malicious and spam content.

Now, as we already see the advantages and disadvantages of bots, let’s learn one more term associated with bots, i.e. Botnet.

What is a Botnet?

A botnet is short for ‘robot network’. It is a network of computers that have been affected by a single bot or an attacking party called the ‘bot-herder’. The bot-herder controls all the individual bots in the network. The bot-herder can command all computers on the botnet to carry out actions simultaneously. Botnets can comprise millions of bots and enable the attacker to carry out criminal activities on a large scale.

Common Bot Attacks

Hackers initiate bot attacks by sending malware to your device, which creates “zombie devices.” Such malware is usually generated through techniques such as web downloads, exploit kits, popup ads, and email attachments.

In the next step, the “zombie device”, aka the affected device, is connected to the Command & Control (C&C) server. This is more specifically applicable to centralized botnet attacks. On the other hand, zombie devices are connected with other infected devices in the P2P botnet type of bot attack.

Based on the established connection, the bot proceeds with the establishment of malicious activities.

Generally, there are two types of attacks. Namely, the centralized and P2P model. Using the mentioned type of bots, various types of attacks are generated. This includes phishing, DDoS attacks, snooping, bricking, and spambots.

1. Phishing

Phishing is a type of bot attack in which you are emotionally manipulated to click a particular link. It usually occurs via email.

2. DDoS Attack

DDoS attacks are a type of bot attack that generates massive network traffic to disrupt the functionality of your network or device.

3. Spambot

Spambot is a type of bot attack in which bots collect your details and send spam messages through acquired accounts. For example, your email ID is taken from your social media platforms. The email ID is utilized to create new accounts (related or unrelated to your persona), and spam messages are sent through these accounts.

4. Snooping

Snooping is a type of bot attack that monitors your network traffic and injects malicious codes into HTTP traffic. Sometimes, credentials are stolen as well. In this bot attack, the hacker essentially ” snoops ” and checks the best targets for a cache poisoning attack, the possibility of registering mistyped domains, etc.

 5. Bricking

This attack is initiated by weakening the security of your system by deleting essential software from IoT. It is a multi-level attack, and tracing the bot attack is tedious. Since the attack moves from one network or device to another, it is difficult to trace the primary attack.

Through the following segment, you will understand the various ways to identify a bot attack.

Bot Detection and Protection

There are a few ways you can tell if your computer has become a part of a botnet:

• Your computer keeps crashing, and you’re unable to identify a reason.
• Installed applications have suddenly started acting weird. They crash or start randomly.
• Programs are starting slowly.
• Your system is taking a long time to shut down or isn’t shutting down completely.
• Your internet speed has become really slow.
• The browser now has components that you never installed.
• The program names in Windows Task Manager are cryptic.
• You are not able to change the settings.
• Random pop-ups and ads appear even though the web browser is closed.
• The system fan is working hard even when you’re not doing anything on the system.
• Your contacts are receiving emails from you that you never sent.
• You’re unable to download any updates for your operating system.

Protecting your Computer from Bots

By preventing bot attacks, you are preventing a huge financial spend. You can protect your network/ server from bot attacks in the following ways:

• Keep your cyber security mechanism upgraded and updated.  Bot attacks prey on your system vulnerabilities. Through the update, make sure that there is no such open vulnerability.
• Invest in the best cyber security systems to keep away bot attacks. Cheaper cyber security alternatives may have a faulty aspect that can open a portal for any bot attack.
• Implement multi-factor authentications to all your systems and networks.
• Do not repeat any of your personal passwords in the professional space to prevent hackers from guessing your passwords easily.
• Keep an eye on the network traffic. Immediately look into any suspicious activity.

Conclusion

Bot attacks are always evolving. Cyber security does provide safety to your network and device. By utilizing the cyber security systems properly, you can keep away bot attacks to a great extent. By keeping away bot attacks, ensure to make use of the good side of bots as well!