Bots Overload OT Commerce Store on OT Box, Spike Paid OTAPI Calls Mistaken for DDoS Attack
An online store built on OT Commerce faced severe performance degradation and sharply rising operational costs when automated bots began systematically crawling product pages. CPU utilization repeatedly hit 98–100% while the number of paid calls to the external OTAPI platform increased six- to seven-fold over three days.
The owner initially described the problem as a DDoS attack because requests arrived from many different IP addresses across multiple countries. However, the traffic was not a volumetric network-layer assault but rather automated HTTP requests that triggered heavy server-side logic and billable OTAPI operations.
The store uses the ready-made OT Box solution, which integrates with the OpenTrade Commerce platform via OTAPI. When a visitor opens a category, search result or product card, the engine may call paid methods such as SearchItemsFrame, GetItemInfo or GetItemFullInfo to fetch live data from Taobao, Tmall, 1688, Alibaba and other marketplaces. Each such call is metered, and some operations carry a multiplier cost.
A previously installed anti-bot module running directly on the VPS failed to stop the problematic traffic. The module’s vendor confirmed it was not designed to address large-scale parsing scenarios. After the owner restricted access to product cards for unauthenticated users, the automated activity persisted.
Switching the site behind the CRONARMOR WAF reversed the situation. Within hours of the cut-over on 16 September, CPU load fell from peaks of 80–100% to mostly single-digit percentages. Over the following 24 hours the server rarely exceeded 9% utilization.
Filtering statistics for the partial period showed 279,680 total HTTP requests, of which 276,100 targeted web pages. Automated requests blocked at the earliest stage numbered 115,660 (41.9%), with 99.3% of them never reaching the origin. Behavioral bots visible in analytics accounted for only 1,367 requests (0.5%), while 27,190 legitimate search-engine crawlers were explicitly permitted.
The case illustrates that high CPU combined with rising external API costs can result from scraping bots rather than classic L7 DDoS. Proper distinction requires analysis of request patterns, not merely the number of source countries or visible analytics events.
Related articles
Keurig K-Supreme Smart Coffee Maker Generates Nearly 1 TB of Outbound Traffic in Ten Days
A Keurig K-Supreme Smart coffee maker unexpectedly produced around 1008 GB of outgoing traffic over ten days, overwhelming a home UniFi access point while generating only 9.94 GB of inbound data. The device had been placed on a separate network segment, yet the traffic remained largely internal to the home LAN rather than traversing the internet connection. The anomaly was discovered by user Nomad while assisting family members with network maintenance through the UniFi dashboard. After the coffee maker was powered off, the issue could not be reproduced in subsequent testing, and no packet captures were available to determine the content or root cause of the traffic. The model requires internet connectivity for remote control, scheduling, capsule recognition, and automatic reordering of coffee supplies. No similar incidents have been reported by other users, and the manufacturer has not issued any statement regarding the event.
Hash Functions Part 1: Core Properties, Security Requirements and Practical Applications
The article provides a detailed introduction to hash functions, explaining how they map arbitrary-length input to fixed-length output while satisfying three fundamental security properties. It covers preimage resistance, second preimage resistance, and collision resistance, along with the avalanche effect that makes even minor input changes produce unrecognizable output. The text explains why a 256-bit digest is required to achieve 128-bit collision resistance, referencing the birthday paradox and its implications for MD5 and SHA-1. Practical guidance includes using OpenSSL for hashing, applying hashes in commitment schemes, enforcing subresource integrity on web pages, and securely storing passwords with Argon2 and bcrypt. The post emphasizes that hash functions alone do not guarantee integrity without proper transmission of the digest and announces a follow-up on SHA-2 and SHA-3 internals.
Digital Twins Enable Pre-Deployment Testing and Post-Change Control in Complex Multi-Vendor Networks
UserGate and Hadal Project experts presented a joint approach at Saint HighLoad++ that combines physical labs, emulation, and simulation into a single lifecycle for validating network changes. The method addresses recurring failures such as IPsec tunnel outages after routine software updates that pass vendor checks yet break branch connectivity. Three complexity sources—multi-vendor environments, historical configuration debt, and continuous dynamic updates—are mitigated by maintaining an always-current network model. Physical laboratories provide hardware-level accuracy for critical devices, while uInfraTwin emulation allows rapid, repeatable testing of configuration scenarios with traffic generators. Simulation tools including Batfish, Hadal, Forward Networks, and IP Fabric deliver end-to-end reachability analysis across tens of thousands of nodes without sending test traffic on production networks. The integrated digital twin continuously updates from live infrastructure, feeds selected segments into safe test environments, and verifies policy compliance after deployment.
Positive Technologies Releases MaxPatrol SIEM 28.0 with Major Resource Optimizations and AI Enhancements
Positive Technologies has launched MaxPatrol SIEM 28.0, enabling security operations centers to process significantly more security events without requiring additional hardware. Internal tests show the new version consumes up to 26% less CPU and 52% less RAM compared to the previous release. Optimized components for event processing and data storage now allow the system to handle 40,000 events per second instead of 20,000 on comparable servers. The architecture has been refined so that unnecessary roles can be omitted when MaxPatrol SIEM operates independently from other platform products such as MaxPatrol VM. The behavioral analysis module MaxPatrol BAD received the new HackTracker component, which detects attackers by behavior patterns rather than only by tools, and now supports Unix event analysis with linked activity chains. The PT Naira AI assistant has been simplified for easier configuration, helping analysts write normalization rules, explain events, and search documentation, with claims of reducing investigation time by up to 50% and rule creation effort by up to 90%. Analysts also benefit from added context in correlation rule cards, quick navigation links, and a native dark theme.