Cequence has released a report on fake assistants being used for credential stuffing during a single week in October. In that stretch, Cequence says one fake assistant, dressed up as a consumer help tool, hit an online marketplace’s sign-in page 414,210 times. Not one of those login attempts worked. Even so, that traffic still came out to 1.5 times the volume of all genuine assistant visits Cequence recorded across five industries during the same week.
Cequence says the larger issue is that real assistants can blend in too. On a Tier 1 telecom site, shortly after launch, one legitimate assistant went from roughly 100 daily requests to somewhere between 19,000 and 32,000 within three weeks. During that run, it was logging in, getting through multi-factor authentication, checking bills, and shopping, all while presenting itself as a desktop browser.
That, in Cequence’s view, is the point: watch the behavior, not the label. The company points to one browser update that took users two weeks to adopt, while this assistant traffic jumped to about 98% on the new version in just 48 hours.
If you manage logins, this report deserves a look. In a sample of 281,627 assistant visits, Cequence found that 85% were low-risk. Still, about one in seven involved booking, buying, sign-ins, or account management. In another case from the report, one brand blocked 3.51 million unauthorized logins over 31 days, and 82% of them slipped past standard bot scores, according to Cequence.
You can read the full report from Cequence, which argues for trusting actions over names, watching sessions closely, and using zero-trust checks, rate limits, and scoped identities when access gets risky.
Author: Manuel Bosque
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"es-ES": "Manuel Bosque se ocupa de la cobertura de software en Softonic: programas de escritorio, herramientas de productividad y utilidades pequeñas que resuelven bien un solo problema. Su criterio es práctico —qué hace realmente un programa, qué pide a cambio y a quién le sirve—, y por eso desconfía de las listas de funciones y prefiere probar. Forma parte del equipo que decide cómo se cuenta el software en la web y trabaja a diario con herramientas de IA aplicadas a la producción editorial.",
"fr-FR": "Manuel Bosque couvre les logiciels chez Softonic : programmes de bureau, outils de productivité et petits utilitaires qui résolvent bien un seul problème. Son approche est pratique — ce qu'un logiciel fait vraiment, ce qu'il demande en échange et à qui il s'adresse —, d'où sa méfiance envers les listes de fonctionnalités et sa préférence pour l'essai. Il fait partie de l'équipe qui définit la manière de traiter le logiciel sur le site et travaille au quotidien avec des outils d'IA appliqués à la production éditoriale.",
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