Security Wiki

Private Access Tokens are cryptographic attestations from a device vendor that vouch for a client's legitimacy, letting some visitors skip CAPTCHAs.

A bot is a software program that performs automated tasks on the internet — some keep the web running, others drive spam, fraud, and large-scale attacks.

A botnet is a network of compromised devices controlled by an attacker and used for coordinated attacks, fraud, and proxy infrastructure.

A browser automation framework is software that controls a real browser programmatically — built for testing, and repurposed by bots at scale.

A brute force attack systematically tries password combinations until one works — automation makes millions of guesses feasible.

A CAPTCHA is a challenge designed to tell humans and automated programs apart, protecting logins, forms and checkouts from abuse by bots.

Under the GDPR, the controller decides why and how personal data is processed while the processor acts on its instructions — a split that assigns liability.

A datacenter proxy routes traffic through servers in commercial hosting facilities — fast and cheap, but recognizable by its network of origin.

A DDoS attack floods a service with traffic from many sources at once to make it unavailable — from raw bandwidth floods to stealthy application-layer attacks.

A fake review is a fabricated customer rating meant to mislead — posted at scale through fake accounts and bots, and increasingly regulated as fraud.

The false positive rate is the share of legitimate users a security system wrongly flags as threats — the metric that decides what protection really costs.

A good bot is automated software that helps the sites it visits — search crawlers, monitors, link previews — and identifies itself honestly.

A grinch bot is a scalping bot aimed at seasonal must-have products — buying out holiday toys and gift electronics to resell them at inflated prices.

A headless browser is a web browser that runs without a visible interface, controlled entirely by code — a core tool for testing and for bot operators alike.

A honeypot is a decoy resource that only automation would touch — a hidden form field, fake endpoint, or planted credential that exposes bots on contact.

A mobile proxy routes traffic through cellular carrier IP addresses shared by thousands of real phone users — the hardest proxy class to block by IP.

A residential proxy routes traffic through IP addresses of real households, making automated requests look like ordinary home visitors.

A risk score condenses many independent signals into one number expressing how likely a request is automated or fraudulent — the basis for graduated responses.

A scalper bot automatically buys limited, high-demand inventory — concert tickets, sneakers, consoles — faster than any human, for resale at a markup.

A sneaker bot is automation built to buy limited-edition releases faster than any human — clearing drops in seconds for the resale market.