On the countdown to a new release, every second counts to snap up those limited-edition new kicks or sought-after concert tickets. Online attackers know that when deploying bots to gain a competitive advantage, without masking their activity it’s a matter of time before their activity is blocked by the target eCommerce platform. Industries are becoming more and more alert to bots and their ever-increasing sophistication.

As the pandemic pushed more businesses to an online-first model, cybercriminals seized opportunities to profit from fraudulent activity. But the financial impact of these attacks on businesses has been hard to quantify. Netacea recently surveyed 440 businesses from across the USA and UK to understand how much financial impact bot attacks are having across different industries.

In gaming and betting, it is said that the house always wins. However, some bettors are constantly looking for loopholes to guarantee a profit no matter the outcome of their bets. They have even developed sophisticated software tools to help with a controversial tactic called arbitrage betting, which costs the industry millions each year.

Netacea surveyed 440 enterprise organizations based in the USA and UK across travel, entertainment, eCommerce, telecommunications and financial services to understand the cost of bot traffic on businesses. Our respondents indicated that they are aware of the increase in scale and frequency of bot attacks over the course of Covid-19 pandemic, with 85% more attacks occurring in 2020 vs. 2019.

Over the past five years, blockchain technology has gone mainstream. More and more investors, businesses and opportunistic hobbyists are filling their cryptocurrency wallets with crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In fact, the global user base of all cryptocurrencies increased by an estimated 190 percent between 2018 and 2020. There is undoubtedly money to be made, ushering newcomers into the world of blockchain.

The old saying goes “cheaters never prosper”, but sadly that is not always the case in online gaming. In dark corners of the internet, new ways of cheating at online games – and getting away with it – are being developed on an alarming scale. Both purchasable and “free to play” (F2P) games now offer rewards either in exchange for real world currency or through “grinding” in game, which takes time and effort.