Today’s organizations face a daunting challenge: effectively and at scale detecting and preventing web scraping attacks. These attacks, which involve automated data extraction from websites, can have far-reaching consequences, ranging from increased infrastructure costs to the loss of sensitive information and intellectual property.
Web scraping attacks pose a unique challenge due to their versatility and adaptability. Unlike other forms of automated abuse, such as account takeover or denial of inventory attacks, web scraping can target any application or endpoint within a domain. This breadth of potential targets makes detection and mitigation particularly challenging, mainly when traditional approaches rely on application instrumentation, adding complexity and delay to development workflows.
Key Challenges in Prevention
Scraping attacks have the potential to occur throughout an organization’s domain, unlike other automated forms of business logic abuse that tend to target specific applications and related endpoints. For instance, while account takeover/credential stuffing attacks focus on applications requiring user credentials and denial of inventory attacks concentrate on checkout applications and their API requests, scraping aims at a broader range of endpoints. This wide-reaching nature of scraping makes prevention a challenge.
Ensuring effective detection and mitigation of web scraper attacks requires a comprehensive approach that covers all public-facing applications, including those with dynamically generated URIs. However, attempting to prevent scraping using a bot mitigation tool that necessitates application instrumentation can present significant obstacles. Injecting an agent into every web application and endpoint within the domain can lead to delays and complexities in the application development and deployment workflow. If the URI is dynamically generated, adding an agent may further impede page load times, exacerbating the processing burden.
Scraping attacks rely on HTTP GET requests, automated attacks initiated by sending straightforward HTTP GET requests to targeted URIs. Since HTTP GET requests typically constitute 99% of all transactions on a standard domain, any bot mitigation strategy must be capable of processing all such transactions. However, this presents challenges in both scalability and efficacy, given that most bot mitigation approaches struggle to handle the entirety of site/domain traffic. Additionally, the emphasis on utilizing HTTP POST for sending device fingerprinting logic means these traditional management approaches often overlook most attack signals originating from HTTP GET requests.
Lastly, scraping attacks exploit application APIs and endpoints, which are increasingly pivotal in transitioning toward a faster, more iterative application development workflow. These API endpoints provide access to the same information users access via rich web-based interfaces, catering to mobile customers, partners, and aggregators. In the face of resistance from web applications, scraping attacks seamlessly pivot to utilizing API endpoints to achieve their objectives. However, first-generation bot mitigation tools encounter a significant challenge in thwarting scraping attacks targeting these API endpoints. Unlike web pages or software development kits (SDKs), API endpoints lack a tangible surface for installing agents. Since API consumers often operate as bots, integrating JavaScript or a Mobile SDK proves exceedingly challenging.
Getting Ahead
Organizations must adopt a strategic approach to defense to effectively combat web scraping attacks. Rather than relying solely on traditional bot mitigation tools, which may struggle to keep pace with evolving attack techniques, a comprehensive strategy centered around API security is essential.
Organizations can detect and prevent even the most sophisticated scraping attacks by leveraging behavioral fingerprinting and machine learning without intrusive application instrumentation. Invest in solutions that offer holistic coverage across all public-facing applications, including web, mobile, and API-based endpoints. By utilizing tools that continuously monitor and analyze incoming traffic, security teams can efficiently identify patterns indicative of scraping activity, enabling proactive intervention to mitigate potential threats before they escalate.
The Benefits of Proactive Defense
The threat of web scraping attacks is real and pervasive but not insurmountable. Organizations can fortify their defenses with API-centric security solutions to future-proof their infrastructure against emerging threats and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly digitized landscape. Organizations can mitigate the financial and reputational risks associated with scraping attacks, enhance operational efficiency, and ensure uninterrupted business continuity by adopting a proactive stance towards web scraping prevention.
