Prevent invalid traffic  is a significant problem for all online publishers. Not only does it increase the risk of account suspension with Google AdSense and other ad networks, but it can also devalue advertisers’ inventory.

Bots can be divided into two categories: General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), which includes web crawlers and traffic from known data centers that have been linked to invalid activity; and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT), where fraudsters make extra effort to hide their activity.

The Advertiser’s Guide to Identifying and Eliminating General Invalid Traffic for Improved ROI”

It’s important to be aware that many different types of bots can drive illegitimate traffic to your website, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong. The good news is that most forms of illegitimate traffic are easy to identify with tools like Google Analytics. Start by looking at metrics like average session duration and page scroll depth. If all visits last less than a second and most users don’t scroll past 10% of the page, that’s a strong indicator that you may be dealing with a bot network.

Next, examine your traffic sources and cross-reference them against a list of known bot networks. Lastly, talk to your hosting provider to see if they’ve received any reports of suspicious activity. If they have, ask them if they have any tools that can help you detect bot traffic on your site. They should be able to point you in the direction of some great tools that can help you prevent invalid traffic and protect your earnings.

With remote work and social media, users have more accounts, platforms and login credentials to remember. As a result, hackers can find and reuse compromised credentials to gain access and perpetrate attacks on a large scale. The threat is fueled by the availability of leaked passwords and hacking tools for sale on the Dark Web. Attackers can scour the Dark Web and underground forums for databases of stolen usernames and passwords, then use automated software to attempt a barrage of login attempts on targeted websites and applications.

Successful logins give attackers access to a user’s account and personal information, as well as other downstream opportunities such as e-commerce fraud or identity theft. For example, video streaming service Netflix fell victim to a credential stuffing attack in 2019, with hackers using breached data and crimeware to steal users’ passwords. Nintendo’s user database also fell prey to a similar attack in 2020.

Stop Credential Stuffing Attacks Online: Prevent Unauthorized Logins

Stop credential stuffing attacks online is that credential stuffing can be stopped with the right cybersecurity measures. These include monitoring for leaked credentials on the Dark Web and other underground forums, enforcing strong password policies with length requirements, requiring unique logins per website or account, and enabling security features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA).

In addition to these preventative strategies, organizations should systematically review fraud case volume over time to identify spikes that may indicate an attack, as well as set clear lines of communication between customer service and information security teams. To protect against unauthorized logins, companies should also deploy devices such as Arkose Labs’ zero trust privileged access management solution (PAM), which screens the devices that connect to the network and blocks credentials from known bad actors, all without disrupting the user experience.

A malicious IP address appears to be a harmless string of numbers, but it can actually reveal valuable information about your device and location. Attackers use this to target you with malware, phishing attacks or scams. The IP can also serve as a channel to the attacker’s command-and-control server.

Malicious IPs aren’t always blacklisted, which makes it difficult for firewalls and other cybersecurity solutions to block them effectively. Some of the challenges include:

Often, malicious IP addresses have low popularity – meaning they don’t get much traffic compared to well-known IPs. As such, they tend to blend in with legitimate sources and may be ignored by security tools.

Malicious IP Address Lookup: Protecting Your Network from Threats

Another challenge is detecting suspicious activity from dynamic IPs that change periodically. This can be due to a lack of visibility on the cloud or when an IT department changes an employee’s assigned IP address.

To solve this challenge, it’s essential to incorporate tracking and multiple threat intelligence sources when assessing an IP’s reputation. Additionally, analyzing the DNS lookup name and destination port can provide valuable insights into the IP’s behavior. For example, an empty DNS name or the use of destination ports commonly used for phishing or spam can flag a malicious IP.

Using machine learning to identify malicious or suspicious IPs helps to fortify networks and systems against threats. For example, Voros’ research on Sophos AI visualized clusters of malicious activity across the IP space based on physical infrastructure, which allowed for detection of never-before-seen IPs.