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How AI is Revolutionizing App Security - Battling Bots While Enabling AI agents
a16z· 2025-06-16 17:37
Bot Traffic Landscape - 50% of internet traffic is bot traffic, indicating a significant portion of online activity is automated [1][52] - AI-driven agents are poised to cause an explosion in automated traffic, necessitating a shift in how websites manage and filter traffic [1][53] - Simply blocking AI traffic is not the right approach; a nuanced understanding of the purpose, behavior, and origin of bots is crucial [1][53] Challenges in Bot Management - Traditional methods of blocking bots based on IP addresses or user agents are becoming increasingly imprecise and can lead to blocking legitimate traffic [6][7] - Distinguishing between good and bad bots is a key challenge, especially with AI bots acting on behalf of humans [4] - Legacy providers' network-level blocking is insufficient for modern applications, as it lacks application context [12][13] Granular Control and Application Context - Application context is crucial for making nuanced decisions about allowing or denying traffic, especially for e-commerce operations where blocking transactions can result in lost revenue [8][9] - Site owners need to understand what kind of automated traffic they want to allow and what they are getting in return [5] - Developers, site owners, and security teams need to make nuanced decisions to understand whether traffic should be allowed or not [9] Techniques for Bot Detection and Management - Building layers of protection, starting with robots.txt, managing IPs, and understanding traffic origins is essential [34] - Reputation databases around IP addresses, considering factors like country of origin and network, can aid in decision-making [34][35] - Fingerprinting techniques, such as J3 and J4 hashes, analyze session metrics to identify and block malicious clients [40][41][42][43] The Future of Bot Management and AI - AI is driving significant revenue to companies, and blocking AI traffic indiscriminately can harm business [14] - The industry is moving towards verified, well-behaved AI crawlers that follow rules, making it easier to detect bots with criminal intent [58][59] - Emerging technologies like Privacy Pass and Cloudflare's automated request fingerprinting aim to identify and authenticate automated clients [47][48]