USE CASE

Stop E-Commerce Bots

Protect customers and the bottom line from malicious bots.

E-commerce is a successful channel for businesses because there is an implied trust between the seller and the customer. Customers expect fair pricing, product availability, and seamless checkout experiences. But bots exploit those expectations. Automated scripts now manipulate digital storefronts, siphon revenue, and poison customer loyalty. Left unchecked, these attacks don’t just affect profits, they erode the foundation of brand reputation.

Image of bots being targeting representing bot management

A conceptual illustration depicting a protected e-commerce platform fending off bot attacks.

Protecting E-Commerce with Bot Management

E-commerce has become a prime target for malicious bots. Bots consume resources without creating value; they distort analytics, inflate infrastructure costs, and create an uneven playing field for legitimate customers. Bot management for e-commerce requires more than perimeter defenses. It must combine behavioral detection, API-specific protection, and adaptive controls that evolve with attackers. Traditional rules-based approaches such as rate limiting and CAPTCHA challenges no longer suffice. Advanced bots now simulate human interactions, bypassing static defenses with ease. Protecting e-commerce systems requires accurate identification of malicious bots and real-time mitigation.

CASE STUDY

Poshmark Prevents Automated Attacks with Cequence

Read the Case Study

How Agentic AI Will Change the Threat Landscape

The next wave of e-commerce bot activity will be powered by agentic AI. Unlike static scripts, these bots won’t just execute preprogrammed tasks. They’ll reason, adapt, and chain actions dynamically. That means:

Dynamic Evasion

AI-driven bots will rewrite themselves mid-attack, shifting user agents, proxies, and even tactics to bypass detection.

Autonomous Decision-Making

Instead of waiting for human operators, AI bots will monitor sites continuously and act instantly when opportunities arise.

Multi-Vector Attacks

They will simultaneously scrape content, monitor inventory, and test gift card balances, coordinating actions across APIs and web apps.

Human Impersonation

With natural language processing and generative AI, bots will blend seamlessly into customer support channels, account recovery flows, and chat-based commerce.

To defend against AI-fueled attacks, organizations need a solution that understands the business context of applications and APIs. A successful defense will anticipate attacker tactics and neutralize threats before they degrade the customer experience.

Common E-Commerce Bots

Content Scraping

<p>Scrapers harvest product data, pricing, and inventory details at scale. Competitors use that data to undercut pricing. Fraudsters resell scraped data to power fake stores and phishing campaigns. The attacks may appear at first to be simply a spike in browsing traffic but the consequences can be severe – revenue pressure, lost conversions, and reputation damage. Modern scrapers rotate IPs, spoof user agents, and even mimic browser behavior. Simple defenses like IP blacklists and rate limits collapse under that pressure. To stop scraping, businesses need defenses that discern the intent behind requests and accurately identify malicious scraping bots.</p><h4>Other Common E-Commerce Attacks</h4>

Account Takeover (ATO)

Credential Stuffing

Business Logic Abuse

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

Online Car Vendor

<p>The vendor endured years of inventory and price scraping by a competitor who then adjusted pricing strategies to undercut the victim, undermining their market position and causing increased operational costs. The vendor experienced approximately four billion malicious scraping requests over a 6-month period.</p>

Grinch Bots

<p>So-called “grinch bots” are a problem year-round. They monitor product pages, cart timers, and release schedules with speed no human can match. When high-demand items drop such as concert tickets, sneakers, or game consoles, bots buy out inventory in seconds. Real customers never even see “Add to Cart” as an option. Resellers then flood secondary markets at inflated prices. Customers blame the retailer for unfairness. Social feeds fill with outrage. The result is not just missed sales, but long-term brand erosion. Combatting grinch bots requires behavioral analysis that can distinguish automated buying loops from genuine shopper journeys in real time.</p><h4>Other Common E-Commerce Attacks</h4>

Account Takeover (ATO)

Credential Stuffing

Business Logic Abuse

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

Playstation

<p>During a PS5 restock event, grinch bots flooded the “add to cart” endpoint of a major U.S. retailer, sending over 20 million bot requests in the first 30 minutes according to Walmart. The bots bought up stock so fast legitimate customers couldn’t compete.</p>

Gift Card & Loyalty Fraud

<p>Gift cards and loyalty points represent stored value, like a digital cash equivalent. Bots target them because they’re easy to monetize and difficult to trace. Attacks range from brute-forcing card balances to credential stuffing loyalty accounts. Once compromised, attackers drain the value of the accounts, often before legitimate customers notice. For retailers, these attacks hit twice: financial loss from reimbursing stolen balances and brand damage from betrayed customer trust. A loyalty program designed to deepen relationships instead becomes an attack surface for fraud automation. Detection here demands bot defense that goes beyond login protection—covering API endpoints, balance check pages, and redemption flows with equal rigor.</p><h4>Other Common E-Commerce Attacks</h4>

Account Takeover (ATO)

Credential Stuffing

Business Logic Abuse

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

Leading Specialty Retailer

<p>The retailer encountered mass reward card fraud attacks, costing the company money with no legitimate customer engagement. In one year, they encountered 2.4 billion malicious transactions, harming brand reputation, customer satisfaction, and consuming valuable customer service resources.</p>

How Cequence Protects Against E-Commerce Bots

The Cequence Platform protects against malicious e-commerce bots with its Bot Management and API Security solutions. Together they enable a deep understanding of the business context of the applications and data and the behavior of regular human traffic and malicious bot traffic.

No Application Modification

Cequence Bot Management protects both apps and APIs without requiring any application modification such as CAPTCHA challenges, ensuring blanket immediate protection.

A conceptual illustration showing Cequence Bot Management protecting apps and APIs with no app modification.

Behavioral Bot Detection

Cequence employs behavioral fingerprinting rather than relying solely on static indicators like IP addresses or user agent strings to identify malicious bots

A Cequence dashboard showing Cequence's behavioral fingerprinting of application and API traffic to accurately detect malicious bots.

Real-Time Threat Prevention

Cequence’s highly-accurate bot detection enables organizations to block bots with the confidence that legitimate customer traffic won’t be adversely affected

A screenshot of a report showing API traffic volume and how malicious traffic was mitigated.

Stopping e-commerce bots isn’t just about protecting revenue, it’s also about preserving trust. Customers want fairness, reliability, and security. The brands that deliver on those expectations will win not just the transaction, but long-term loyalty.

Additional Resources

CASE STUDY

Retailer Prevents Bots and Saves $1.7M Annually

Read the Case Study

An illustration depicting the scraping of content being blocked

BLOG

What is Gift Card and Loyalty Program Abuse?

Read the Blog

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