Outcomes
- Classify major bot families and operator motivations
- Describe how business context changes bot prioritization
Prerequisites
- Section 1 completed
- Basic understanding of the HTTP request lifecycle
Section Breakdown
Lecture 5
The History of Bots — From Early Web Crawlers to AI Agents
Track how bot capabilities evolved from deterministic crawlers into adaptive AI-assisted automation systems.
Lecture 6
Bot Taxonomy — Know Your Enemy
Build a practical taxonomy that separates scraping, fraud, abuse automation, monitoring, and research traffic.
Lecture 7
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots — Crawlers, Monitors & the Gray Area
Examine edge cases where intent, business value, and operational behavior are misaligned.
Lecture 8
The Bot Economy — Scale, Motivation & Business Impact
Tie bot campaigns to economics, margins, infrastructure costs, and the incentives behind attack volume.
Lecture 9
Legal & Ethical Framework for Red & Blue Teams
Frame the legal boundaries, disclosure concerns, and internal safeguards required for this kind of work.
Assignment
Bot Threat Landscape Analysis
Produce a threat model that ranks the bot classes most relevant to your environment, with business impact and likely telemetry sources.