What are ISP Proxies, and how do Bots exploit ISP Proxies?
How Bots use ISP Proxies: A Comprehensive Guide
ISP proxies are often the tool of choice for hackers who want to deploy bots at massive scale. In this article, we will delve into what ISP proxies are, how they differ from other proxy types, and show you some strategies to safeguard your business against potential threats from bots using ISP proxy services.
Understanding ISP Proxies
ISP proxies, or Internet Service Provider proxies, share similarities with residential proxies as they both rely on IP addresses associated with ISPs. However, ISP proxies operate on data center servers, offering the advantages of speed, uptime, and anonymity typically associated with data center proxies. Think of ISP proxies as residential proxies on steroids. At the same time as allowing much better performance and scale, they maintain the anonymity of residential proxy IPs, making them effective in bypassing IP-based security measures based on just IP reputation alone.
Effectively, ISP Proxies bring the anonymity of shared residential IPs, together with the speed and management advantages of data centers, available as one service.
Users of ISP proxies benefit from anonymity, the real IP address is never exposed. Critically, the attackers can hide inside the massive pool of residential ISPs, making it virtually impossible to block by IP. Traditional data centers operate with a much smaller range of ISP, or it may be possible to block or risk flagging the entire data center ASN in the WAF.
ISP proxies often offer shared, dedicated and semi-dedicated IP address lists depending on how they are packaged. These IPs come in lists of static addresses, but often there’s an option to rotate the proxies with every connection request for an additional cost. The ISP proxies can also use the same IP, for use cases where this is more helpful than constant rotation.
Bot Scapers using ISP Proxies
ISP proxies are very useful for large-scale online hacking where the sheer number of residential proxies make it much more challenging to block an attack. Residential proxy services often have tens of thousands or even millions of IPs across hundreds of locations. Their dedicated server hosting ensures fast connectivity and high IP rotation, making them ideal for web scraping bots, scalping bots, or conducting low-and-slow bot attacks to avoid the traditional rate-limiting WAF rules. In static IP mode, they are often employed for social media monitoring, SEO monitoring, and any task requiring management of multiple online accounts, where rotation of IPs isn’t helpful or required.
Bot Attacks using ISP Proxies
ISP proxies may also have links to “bots as service” (BaaS) platforms or professional data scraping services and tools. This allows hackers with limited programming skills to deploy bots at massive scale to use these ISP proxies to avoid IP based detection using pre-build scripts or templates.
Safeguarding Your Business Against ISP Proxies
While ISP proxies offer unparalleled advantages, it's crucial to address the challenges they pose. One significant drawback is their higher cost compared to residential and data center proxies. However, the cost trend is declining over time. With a growing number of bot traffic originating from ISP proxies, relying solely on IP-based security solutions just won’t work.
To protect your business effectively, consider a robust fraud and bot management solution that encompasses many threat variants beyond IP address reputation. VerifiedVisitors for example is built from the ground-up using an AI core in the hybrid cloud to analyze hundreds of different threat signals, from digital provenance, to actual behavioral analysis, fingerprints, platform detection, and presence of real human mouse trails or pointer data.
In conclusion, ISP proxies have emerged as a powerful tool for various online endeavors. Their unique blend of speed, anonymity, and high-quality IPs has made them a favorite among bot operators. However, businesses must remain vigilant and employ comprehensive bot and fraud management solutions such as VerifiedVisitors.
In conclusion, ISP proxies have emerged as a powerful tool for various online endeavors. Their unique blend of speed, anonymity, and high-quality IPs has made them a favorite among bot operators. However, businesses must remain vigilant and employ comprehensive bot and fraud management solutions such as VerifiedVisitors.
Photo by Emile Guillemot on Unsplash
