AI agents and server load
Cloudflare has noted that many website operators now face significant pressure from AI agents. These are automated programs that crawl the internet to collect data for training large language models. Unlike standard search engine bots, these agents can be aggressive, consuming server resources and potentially slowing down websites for genuine human visitors.
For a small business, this means that even if your customer numbers haven't changed, your hosting costs or site performance might be affected by these automated visitors. It is possible to block these agents at the firewall level if they are not providing value to your business.
Exploits in legacy code
In a recent statement, Cloudflare's leadership discussed 'PHP2SHELL', a type of vulnerability that allows attackers to take control of a server through PHP, a common programming language used by many older websites. The report suggests that sovereign states and sophisticated hacking groups have likely been using these flaws for a long time before they were publicly documented.
This highlights the risk of maintaining 'legacy' systems—older software that is no longer receiving regular security updates. If your business runs on older web platforms, the risk of a breach is higher because these vulnerabilities are well-understood by attackers.
The future of hosting
The report also touched on the technology used to run modern applications. For several years, 'containers'—a way of packaging software so it runs reliably on different computers—have been the standard. However, Cloudflare suggests that this technology may be becoming less relevant as 'serverless' functions take over.
Serverless technology allows code to run only when needed, rather than having a server constantly active. While this sounds technical, the practical outcome for a business owner is the potential for lower costs and better security, as there is less active infrastructure for an attacker to target. We do not yet know if this will lead to a total move away from containers, but the trend towards more ephemeral, short-lived hosting environments is clear.