Director of Solution Architects – APAC
Barracuda
In 2025, phishing and disruptive bot traffic remain key conversations in terms of cybersecurity, and for good reason. Both threats are prolific and evolving rapidly. Between December 2024 and February 2025, Barracuda security analysts detected millions of requests from non-malicious but often aggressive Gen AI bots targeting websites and other web applications. At the same time, phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) attacks targeting organizations around the world spiked, with over a million incidents detected in just the first two months of 2025.
Phishing and bots present very different challenges for security teams in terms of their nature and impact. What both approaches have in common is the link to generative AI. In the case of the Gen AI scraper bots, it’s about both the sheer volume of traffic and the potential exposure of data. In the case of AI-powered phishing kits it’s about scale and speed in targeting and distribution. With AI-driven automation, phishing scammers can launch highly targeted campaigns in a fraction of the time it once took.
The bot menace
There are bots that support business outcomes and those that compromise them. Search engine bots or SEO crawlers are necessary for discoverability, but malicious bots are increasingly being used to scan for vulnerabilities, launch credential-stuffing attacks and exploit weaknesses in code. These attacks are often opportunistic, targeting businesses that may simply have missed a patch or overlooked a misconfiguration.
Cybercriminals can weaponize stolen credentials from the dark web, feed them into automated tools, and attempt to gain access to applications that are online. This puts significant pressure on businesses that rely on their digital presence to remain operational and secure around the clock.
Adding to the complexity is the integration of generative AI. New Gen AI bots are designed to gather up information in vast volumes and our data shows they relentlessly pound web apps, day in, day out.
Ever evolving email attacks
Email remains one of the most common attack vectors for cyber threats, largely because email-base attacks such as social engineering exploit natural human behavior. Email is still the primary communication tool for most organizations, making it a popular entry point into networks – and this
is made even easier when scammers can just pay for and leverage phishing kits. Once an attacker gains access to credentials through a phishing link, they can reuse those details to access networks, escalate privileges, and move laterally within systems. For cybercriminals, a stolen login can be more valuable than a malware payload.
Staying safe
The AI-driven acceleration makes it even harder for traditional security measures to keep pace. Businesses need to recognize not only how attackers are using bots including GenAI scraper bots and the latest phishing techniques, but also how they can apply AI and machine learning to stay ahead. Two security tools that can help businesses defend against these attacks are Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and robust email security gateways.
Modern security tools must be both precise and adaptable. With WAFs now powered by AI these solutions allow organizations to fingerprint traffic and identify patterns associated with automated threats. In turn, businesses are given the flexibility to decide which bots should be allowed to access their systems and which should be blocked, a capability that’s critical for industries that depend on information sharing but still need to protect proprietary information.
Similarly, advanced email security solutions rely on machine learning and behavioral analytics to detect phishing attempts that traditional filters might miss. This means stopping threats automatically before they ever reach the end user.
AI is being used by cybercriminals to increase effect, but it is also one of the most powerful tools businesses and cybersecurity vendors have at their disposal. By embedding AI into both web and email security, businesses can keep pace with the scale, speed and sophistication of increasingly complex threats.
Authored By: Mark Lukie, Director of Solution Architects – APAC, Barracuda
