Cloudflare launches Precursor to catch bots by watching entire sessions
Cloudflare Inc. today opened general availability for Precursor, a bot detection system that tracks how a visitor behaves across an entire browsing session instead of testing them once on arrival.
Precursor runs inside the browser. It streams interaction signals back to Cloudflare’s edge, where servers score them in real time for evidence of automation. The target is the CAPTCHA. A challenge page tests the visitor once, at the door. Everything the visitor does after that is assumed good.
Cloudflare puts bot traffic at roughly 57% of web requests. By its count, automation now outweighs people on the internet. Cloudflare’s argument is that a point-in-time check is easy to fake. A bot can fake a single action. Faking an entire session, with the timing irregularities of a real person, costs real engineering effort.
“Instead of just checking an ID at the gate, we are looking at behavior over the entire visit,” said Chief Technology Officer Dane Knecht.
