APAC Bot Attacks Surge as AI Commerce Booms

Asia Pacific's fast-growing commerce economy is becoming a bigger target for cybercriminals as retailers, travel platforms, and hospitality brands accelerate adoption of AI-powered shopping, booking, and customer experiences. According to Akamai's latest State of the Internet security report, "Securing the Agentic Storefront: Attacks on Commerce," bot activity targeting APAC commerce companies rose 63% in 2025, the sharpest increase of any region globally, outpacing more modest rises in North America (7%) and EMEA (16%). From July to December 2025, commerce accounted for 38% of all AI bot traffic observed across industries in the region.

The surge reflects a broader industry shift toward agentic commerce, where retailers deploy bots to hyperpersonalize shopping experiences and reduce cart abandonment. Chatbot adoption is growing especially fast in APAC as businesses compete to differentiate through more personalized customer interactions. That same growth is making it harder to distinguish legitimate automation from malicious bots, scraping, credential stuffing, and API abuse, all operating at once across the same commerce infrastructure.

Retail remained the primary target, but travel and hospitality saw disproportionately greater exposure in APAC compared with other regions. Fragmented travel platforms, high mobile adoption, popular loyalty programs, and seasonal booking peaks around holidays like Lunar New Year, Golden Week, Diwali, and year-end travel all contributed. Travel alone accounted for 22% of commerce web attacks in the region, with APIs specifically targeted in 25% of attacks against travel platforms.

APIs are emerging as a growing exposure point more broadly, as commerce businesses connect payments, loyalty programs, inventory, logistics, and booking systems through them. Layer 7 (application-layer) DDoS pressure also intensified sharply, rising 39% globally from 260 billion to 361 billion events in 2025. Among API-targeted Layer 7 DDoS attacks specifically, retail bore the largest share at 51%, followed by hospitality at 28% and travel at 21%.

The regional pattern fits a larger global trend Akamai's report identifies: commerce has become the world's most targeted industry overall, with AI bots now making up nearly half (47.9%) of all commerce traffic on Akamai's network as of December 2025. Akamai's recommended response centers on mapping the API-driven revenue chain, shifting toward risk-based bot governance rather than blanket blocking, and implementing microsegmentation, an approach that acknowledges legitimate AI agents are now a permanent part of the commerce customer base, not just a threat to filter out.