Freebie Bots a Growing Threat for Online Retailers, Says Kasada

Freebie bots, which automatically scan retail websites for mispriced goods and services, are a growing threat for online retailers, said cybersecurity solutions provider Kasada Tuesday. Its research found over 250 retailers were recently targeted by freebie bots, with over 7 million messages sent monthly in freebie communities. In one community, members used bots to buy nearly 100,000 products in a month at a value of $3.4 million, but the total cost of goods to bot users was $882, it said. Top items purchased using the bots included Apple MacBook Air laptops, plus apparel and beauty products, it said. Pricing errors were the result of a decimal point misplacement, in some cases enabling discounts of 99%, the company said. Bad actors use the bots to buy as much stock of the erroneously priced goods as possible, then resell the goods for a hefty profit, Kasada said. “In addition to impacting a retailer’s inventory, revenue and brand, Freebie Bots also increase infrastructure expenses,” said Kasada CEO Sam Crowther, saying bots enable “tens of thousands of users to automatically issue requests across an entire product catalog in parallel -- and do so every couple of seconds or less.” Retailers have to maintain a strong site architecture to handle the demand without crashing or becoming unavailable to regular shoppers, said Crowther. “It has become very easy for anyone to purchase and utilize a bot -- and increasingly difficult for retailers to identify and stop them,” he said. Kasada said its “proactive” solution “adapts as fast as attackers do, making automated attacks unviable.”