WAF solutions against bot attacks
Bots account for a significant portion of global web traffic, with many engaging in malicious activities such as credential stuffing, web scraping, fraud, API abuse, and DDoS attacks. These automated threats pose serious risks to web applications, leading to data breaches, service disruptions, and financial losses. Organizations must implement effective bot mitigation strategies to protect their digital assets from these evolving threats.
Key Bot-Related Threats
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Credential Stuffing
Credential stuffing occurs when attackers use stolen username-password combinations from previous data breaches to gain unauthorized access to user accounts. Bots automate these login attempts, testing thousands of credentials across multiple platforms.
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Web Scraping
Scraping bots systematically extract competitive intelligence, pricing information, or proprietary data from websites without authorization. While some scrapers are harmless, others engage in data theft, intellectual property violations, and unfair competitive practices.
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Account Takeover (ATO) Attacks
Automated bots attempt to hijack user accounts by exploiting weak credentials or security flaws. ATO attacks often involve credential stuffing, brute-force attacks, or session hijacking to gain control over user accounts, leading to identity fraud, financial theft, and data breaches.
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API Abuse & Enumeration
APIs are a common target for bot-driven attacks, where automated scripts exploit API endpoints to extract data, test credentials, or identify vulnerabilities. Attackers may attempt API enumeration, where bots systematically guess API parameters to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information.
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DDoS Attacks
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks involve massive volumes of bot-generated traffic overwhelming web services, disrupting operations, and causing downtime. Attackers often use botnets—networks of compromised devices—to flood websites and APIs with malicious traffic.
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Fake Account Creation & Spam
Bots are frequently used to create fake user accounts, generate spam content, and manipulate online platforms. These activities can lead to fraud, reputational damage, and resource exhaustion for businesses.
FortiWeb’s Multi-Layered Bot Protection
To effectively mitigate malicious bot activity, FortiWeb employs a combination of AI-driven detection, behavioral analysis, and real-time threat intelligence:
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Known Bots Detection – FortiWeb’s Known Bots feature utilizes global threat intelligence to block traffic from known malicious botnets, stopping automated attacks at the network edge.
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Proactive Bot Deception – The Bot Deception feature uses hidden links and traps to expose and intercept automated crawlers and unauthorized scrapers that do not behave like legitimate users.
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Behavioral AI & Anomaly Detection – FortiWeb provides several advanced detection methods:
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Threshold-Based Detection: Flags abnormal behavior based on predefined metrics like request rates and repetitive patterns.
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Biometric-Based Detection: Analyzes user interactions such as mouse movements, scrolling, and typing rhythms to distinguish bots from real users.
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Machine Learning-Based Detection: Builds dynamic behavioral models from legitimate traffic to automatically identify and respond to anomalies.
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CAPTCHA & JavaScript Challenges – FortiWeb employs progressive challenge mechanisms to verify human users, effectively blocking bots that cannot process JavaScript or solve CAPTCHA tests.
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Scrubbing Center-Based Bot Detection – FortiWeb integrates with the Advanced Bot Protection service powered by FortiAppSec, a Fortinet SaaS solution designed to detect and mitigate sophisticated automated threats. It defends against data harvesting, credential stuffing, account takeovers, application-layer DDoS, and other forms of fraudulent bot activity using real-time bot intelligence and cloud-based traffic analysis.
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DoS Attack Mitigation – FortiWeb delivers robust protection against both application-layer and network-layer denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, including HTTP floods, TCP SYN floods, and excessive connection attempts.
Watch the following videos on FortiWeb's Bot Mitigation features:
For best practices of configuring your WAF to effectively defend against the bot attacks, see WAF Solutions against Bot Attacks.