Scrapin' Away in World Eliteaville...

Thanks Vietnam/ Brazil bots!

from Google AI:

Understanding a sudden surge in blog traffic from Vietnam or Brazil in your Blogger statistics: 

When you see a sudden, significant increase in blog traffic from specific countries like Vietnam or Brazil, especially if it's unusual for your typical audience, it's often a sign of bot traffic or other forms of invalid traffic (IVT). 

Here's why and what it means:

1. Bot Traffic: 

Automated visits: Bots are automated programs designed to visit websites and perform certain actions, like clicking links, scraping content, or filling out forms. 

Skewed metrics: These bots can inflate your pageviews, session duration, and other metrics, giving you a false impression of your blog's popularity. 

Reasons for bot traffic: 

Content scraping: Bots may be scraping your content to repurpose or republish it elsewhere. 

Referral spam: You might be receiving traffic from websites you don't recognize, which is a form of referral spam, where malicious websites send fake traffic to your site to boost their own rankings. 

Fraudulent activities: In some cases, bots are used for fraudulent purposes like click fraud or inflating ad revenue. 

2. Potential reasons for the traffic spike Bot activity: 

It's likely that a large number of bots are visiting your blog. 

Referral spam: The spike could be due to a specific source of referral spam. 

Negative SEO: Although less common, it could be a deliberate attempt to harm your blog's reputation by sending fake traffic. 

Testing or monitoring: Some companies or individuals might be using bots to test or monitor websites, and your blog happened to be included. 

3. Impact on your blog statistics: 

Inflated numbers: Your pageviews, unique visitors, and session duration may appear higher than they actually are. 

Skewed data: The traffic from bots can distort your analytics, making it difficult to understand your real audience and their behavior. 

Misleading reports: You might be misled into thinking your blog is more popular than it is, potentially leading to inaccurate decisions about content strategy or monetization. 

4. What to do:

Analyze your analytics: Use Google Analytics to identify the source of the traffic, the pages they are visiting, and their engagement metrics (bounce rate, session duration). 

Look for patterns: See if the traffic spikes occur at specific times, from certain IP addresses, or through particular referral sources. 

Filter bot traffic: Google Analytics allows you to filter out known bot traffic. 

Consider blocking suspicious IP addresses: If you identify specific IP addresses or ranges associated with the bot traffic, you can consider blocking them.
Don't panic: While bot traffic can be frustrating, it's generally harmless.

In summary, a sudden influx of traffic from Vietnam or Brazil in your Blogger statistics likely indicates bot activity or invalid traffic. While it can skew your data, it's usually not a cause for alarm. By analyzing your analytics and taking appropriate measures, you can better understand and mitigate the impact of such traffic on your blog statistics.

At 100 visits a minute, this is not a direct Domain Name Server (DNS) attack, but may be part of a greater Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against Blogger. My Farmers Letters blog is getting a lot of Brazil and Vietnam traffic, too, but at only ~1/15th this level (@ 5-10 per minute).  My 3 Thersites blogs are each also getting Brazil/ Vietnam bot traffic at about the 1 visit per minute level

In June 2025, Cloudflare reported blocking the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack ever recorded, according to SC Media. This attack peaked at 7.3 terabits per second (Tbps), and sent over 37.4 TB of data in just 45 seconds. 

Brazil and Vietnam played a significant role as origin points for this attack: 

• Nearly half of the attack traffic originated from Brazil and Vietnam.
• Telefonica Brazil accounted for 10.5% of the total DDoS attack traffic, and Viettel Group (Vietnam) accounted for 9.8%.
• Other significant traffic sources included Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Ukraine, Ecuador, Thailand, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. 

Additional details about the attack:

• It utilized UDP floods as the primary attack vector, according to ZDNET.
• Cloudflare's automated systems and mitigation rules were instrumental in neutralizing the attack.
• The attack originated from over 122,000 source IP addresses across 161 countries. 

In addition to this specific large-scale event, there have been other reports of cyberattacks linked to Vietnam and Brazil:

• In 2025, Anonymous VNLBN conducted a cyber assault on Vietnam.
• A new DDoS Trojan was reported in 2010 attacking sites criticizing the Vietnamese Communist Party.
• Brazil's Supreme Court recently ruled that social media companies can be held liable for user-generated content, aiming to combat hate speech and incitement to violence.
• In 2024, Brazil's state governments were targeted by phishing campaigns, according to Google Cloud.
• In 2024, a ransomware attack on the Brazilian government exposed the "Fog" cyber-gang, revealing confidential data, including bank data and personal identifiers. 

Note: The information above highlights specific instances where Vietnam and Brazil have been linked to cyberattacks. It is important to remember that these are just examples, and the global cyber landscape is constantly evolving

Someone is likely rehearsing another Big Cyberattack... Iran? China?

Update 6:10 pm on 6/28: