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Terms and concepts
Published April 5, 2023 | Last modified November 5, 2026
The following information explains important terms and concepts associated with Bot Defense.
Types of attacks
Bot Defense can protect your applications from the following types of automated attacks.
| Attack Names | Definition |
|---|---|
| Application DDoS | This attack targets a slow database search of a website, yielding vast resources from the website through a steady stream of GET requests that do not set off bandwidth trigger alarms, but that often render the database unavailable. |
| Aggregator threat surface | Financial aggregators create unintended risks for the financial institutions from which they source consumer data. |
| Content scraping | Attackers use automated tools to collect large amounts of publicly available data from a target application, such as price information, product availability, and so on, to reuse that data elsewhere. |
| Credit application fraud | Attackers use stolen personally identifiable information (PII) to open an account in another person’s name. |
| Credential stuffing | An attack where stolen username/password pairs are used in mass login attempts using automated tooling. Attackers test stolen credentials against the authentication mechanism to exploit credentials that have been reused across multiple platforms. |
| Denial of service (DoS) | An attack that overwhelms a system so that it cannot respond to service requests. This attack is usually intended to cause a system to shutdown to perform a separate attack. |
| Distributed denial of service (DDoS) | An attack that targets a system using multiple host machines infected with malware, often rendering the target system unavailable for legitimate traffic. |
| Fake account creation/exploitation | Bad actors use fake accounts to commit financially motivated attacks such as reward abuse on retail sites and money laundering via online banking. |
| Gift card cracking | When attackers check millions of gift card number variations on a gift card application to identify card numbers that hold value. After the attacker identifies card numbers with positive balances, they use or sell the gift cards before the legitimate customer has a chance to use it. |
For additional information, see OWASP.org.
Terminology
The following terms help you understand how Bot Defense protects your sensitive resources.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bot | Software programs that run automated tasks. Bot activity accounts for about 50% of all internet traffic, and can negatively impact your users, your data and revenue for your organization. |
| Bad bot | Automated software programs that perform harmful tasks. Bad bot attacks can take over customer accounts and slow web and app performance. They can prevent purchases and frustrate loyal customers. They can also reduce revenue, while increasing the cost of doing business. |
| Known bot | Automated software programs for which F5 has verified the authenticity and intent, such as test tools and search engine crawlers. |
| Classifications | Broad categories used to identify traffic types targeted by a bot detection rule. |
| Client | An end user device trying to access resources protected by Bot Defense. |
| Controlled blocking rule | A flexible rate limit that identifies automated signal data and relies on other telemetry to mitigate automation. The more unpredictable nature of mitigation makes it harder for attackers to understand what is blocking them. |
| Enforced blocking rule | Immediately takes mitigation based on signal data without thresholds. |
| Endpoint | URL paths that potentially expose your application to harm and that attackers are likely to try to exploit. |
| Entry point | The endpoint that your users are likely to encounter first when they visit your website. Typically, an HTML form page, such as a login page. F5 recommends that you configure Bot Defense to insert JavaScript on this page to monitor and mitigate automated traffic. |
| False negative | Bot Defense did not identify automated transactions, and forwarded the transaction to the origin. |
| False positive | Bot Defense incorrectly identified transactions as automated or undesirable (aggregators, business partners, and so on). These transactions should have been permitted to reach the origin. |
| Flow | An area of functionality that you configure Bot Defense to protect, such as a login flow, forgot password flow or account sign-up flow. |
| Mitigation Action | Mitigation action is configurable within the Bot Endpoint Policy. Mitigations determine what happens to automated transactions (block, redirect, and so on). |
| Origin | The protected endpoint, website, or application that Bot Defense protects. |
| Protected endpoint | Applications or resources protected by Bot Defense. |
| Signals | Data points that are collected when the Bot Defense JavaScript runs. |