Web Bot Auth: Verifying User Identity & Ensuring Agent Trust Through the Customer Journey
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<div is="fusion-wysiwyg" class=" normal__dots "> <div class="component"> <div class="content"> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">DataDome Bot Protect now supports Web Bot Auth, an emerging IETF authentication standard that enables AI agents to prove their identity with cryptographic verification. This advancement allows DataDome customers to authenticate legitimate AI agents with unforgeable signatures while maintaining robust protection against impersonation and fraud—eliminating the lose-lose choice between blocking potential business or accepting fraud risk.</span></p> <h2><b>What is Web Bot Auth & why is it important?</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Consumer adoption of AI agents for e-commerce is still relatively small today, but it is growing rapidly. Security teams currently face a tough choice in how to respond to this new traffic type: block suspicious or unknown AI agents and risk losing legitimate business, or trust existing identifiers in user agent</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">strings that fraudsters can easily forge and risk higher fraud costs. This lose-lose proposition exists because the identity of an AI agent is uncertain and imprecise.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, an agent can claim “I am ChatGPT” by simply adding the following text to its User-Agent header: </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">GPTBot/1.3; +https://openai.com/gptbot</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. That’s it. No verification, no authentication: just a text string.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Attackers know this. They </span><a href="https://datadome.co/threat-research/ai-agent-spoofing/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">impersonate search engines</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to scrape pricing data, pretend to be monitoring tools while probing for vulnerabilities, and masquerade as legitimate AI agents to bypass defenses. </span></p> <p>An emerging <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bofreq-nottingham-web-bot-auth/" rel="nofollow noopener">IETF standard</a>, Web Bot Auth, is a new authentication method for AI agents that addresses this problem by allowing AI agents to prove their identity with high confidence when interacting with web resources.<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Web Bot Auth uses unique cryptographic signatures, like digital passports, that can’t be forged in e-commerce interactions. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">As a de facto solution, Web Bot Auth has already been widely adopted by p</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ayment companies, AI platforms, and major cloud providers like</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.</span></p> <p><a href="https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/amazon-bedrock-agentcore-browser-web-bot-auth-preview/" rel="nofollow noopener"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amazon Bedrock AgentCore</span></i></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> now supports Web Bot Auth (in preview), providing AI agents with verifiable cryptographic identities. DataDome backs AgentCore to validate this verification process and minimize friction for verified AI agents across authorized domains. With DataDome and AgentCore, customers can establish continuous agent trust relationships for domains that require agentic AI access to meet business needs.</span></i></p> <h2><b>Unforgeable cryptographic proof</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Web Bot Auth requires AI agents to attach a</span><b> cryptographic signature</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to every HTTP request validated by DataDome.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Each signature proves two critical things: </span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>AI agent identity</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">: Identify which AI platform is making the request (e.g., OpenAI, AWS) and consequently </span><b>apply appropriate business policies</b></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Request integrity</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">: </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ensure requests remain unaltered, removing speculation and preventing fraudulent behavior</span></li> </ul> <div id="attachment_131318" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-131318" class="wp-image-131318 size-large" src="https://datadome.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Web-Auth-Diagram-1024x658.png" alt="Web Bot Auth diagram" width="1024" height="658" srcset="https://datadome.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Web-Auth-Diagram-1024x658.png 1024w, https://datadome.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Web-Auth-Diagram-300x193.png 300w, https://datadome.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Web-Auth-Diagram-768x494.png 768w, https://datadome.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Web-Auth-Diagram.png 1406w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" title="Web Bot Auth: Verifying User Identity & Ensuring Agent Trust Through the Customer Journey"> <p id="caption-attachment-131318" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="color: rgba(16, 82, 109, 0.8); font-family: Polymath, Poppins, arial; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.28px;">Let’s deep dive into how Web Bot Auth works:</span></p> </div> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The AI agent includes its signed data, as well as some metadata (validity, key ID, tag, etc.) inside the </span><b>Signature and Signature-input </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">request headers.</span></span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">DataDome analyzes 100% of the requests by the AI agent and verifies the signature using the public key from the provider platform, which is available</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at a well-known location,</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> continuously.</span></span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style="font-size: 20px;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">With </span><b>agent authentication established,</b> <span style="font-weight: 400;">guesswork and impersonation are eliminated. In DataDome’s dashboard, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">customers can then enforce granular traffic policies tailored to specific endpoints. For example, they can allow access to product pages while rate limiting login attempts for a particular agent.</span></span></li> </ol> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Example using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore:</span></p> <pre class="EnlighterJSRAW" data-enlighter-language="generic"><span style="font-size: 20px;">GET /products/xba456 HTTP/1.1 Host: yourdomain.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/140.0.0.0 Amazon-Bedrock-AgentCore-Browser/1.0 (Chromium; +https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-agentcore/latest/devguide/browser-tool.html) Signature-Agent:"https://zxy...5abc.keydirectory.signer.us-east-1.on.aws" Signature-Input: sig1=("@authority" "signature-agent");created=176762217;alg="ed25519";keyid="WNTmN5bl8...PcD476nwN";tag="web-bot-auth";expires=1767625817;nonce="YkfwQ...X_DvyHAbIRmsdnyjI" Signature:sig1=:K+XW0IAT2yCK...aFCG7kZSEER8tgAQ==: Accept: application/json</span></pre> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Web Bot Auth is a key enabler of </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">DataDome’s Bot Protect with </span><a href="https://datadome.co/products/agent-trust-management/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Agent Trust</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. It works by authenticating every digital interaction from an AI agent that follows this protocol, constantly verifying its identity. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">These verified identities enable organizations to set granular access policies per AI agent. Decide which parts of your site they can access: welcome them on product pages and public content, while protecting login flows, checkout processes, or sensitive customer data. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Instead of blocking AI agents entirely or leaving your site exposed, you set guardrails that align with your business strategy to ensure controlled growth.</span></p> <h2><b>What Web Bot Auth means for your security posture</b></h2> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Eliminate false identity risks and manual allow-list overhead with cryptographically verified agentic authentication</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Distinguish legitimate search crawlers, partner APIs, and AI agents from sophisticated impersonators. Your security team stops managing allow lists manually, reducing operational burden while closing impersonation attack vectors.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Guarantee business continuity for critical automated traffic. </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Authenticated bots and AI agents pass through instantly with cryptographic verification. No manual security reviews delaying partner integrations. No false positives damaging SEO rankings or blocking essential services. Protection with zero friction.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Reduced operational overhead. </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stop investigating “is this really ChatGPT?” tickets. Stop maintaining brittle IP allowlists that break when services change infrastructure.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><b>Zero setup</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for existing customers and fast onboarding for new customers.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">DataDome manages public keys, validates signatures, handles caching, and</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> protects the verification pipeline. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Your team deploys nothing.</span></li> </ul> <h2><b>The agentic AI era needs Agent Trust</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">AI agents are multiplying fast. Some play by the rules and </span><a href="https://datadome.co/agent-trust-management/ai-agent-spoofing/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">identify themselves properly</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Many don’t. As agentic traffic grows in the following months, cryptographic authentication will become the baseline expectation, not a nice-to-have capability.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But Web Bot Auth only solves half the problem. It tells you </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">which</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> agentic platform the request is coming from, but doesn’t tell you </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">what the AI agents are trying to do</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s where </span><a href="https://datadome.co/bot-management-protection/why-intent-based-detection-matters-in-the-age-of-ai-agents/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">intent-based detection</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">matters. DataDome validates legitimate users and AI agents with continuous identity verification and intent-based detection. Our Cyberfraud Protection Platform analyzes behavior in real-time by examining every click, request pattern, and interaction throughout the customer journey to determine whether an agent’s actions align with legitimate use. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, a verified agent could technically follow the Web Bot Auth protocol while hoarding inventory to block human customers, proving that cryptographic identity alone is insufficient. A cryptographically verified—authenticated and known—agent can still abuse the service without pre-established and enforceable guardrails.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This abuse is significant, including inventory hoarding in e-commerce, which prevents legitimate purchases, degrades user experience, and bypasses traditional detection. Authenticated AI agents and bots can also be used for data scraping, credential stuffing, or DDoS attacks, exploiting verified trust to mask malicious intent.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">DataDome implements Agent Trust as a crucial defense layer that moves beyond “who are you?” to intensely focus on “what is your intent and behavior?” Every digital interaction with an AI agent is authenticated, accountable, and aligned with legitimate business value and terms of service.</span></p> <p><a href="https://datadome.co/products/agent-trust-management/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Agent Trust</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> continuously assesses </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">what</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the AI agent is doing, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">why</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it’s doing it, and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">whether</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it continues to deserve trust as it acts. This enables frictionless interactions for verified and trusted AI agents within defined guardrails, while automatically blocking malicious AI and limiting untrusted agents before they can cause damage.</span></p> <p><b>Web Bot Auth signature verification is live now for all DataDome customers.</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> No setup required.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Need verification for your AI agent? <a href="https://datadome.co/resources/ai-agent-verification/#submitnow">Pre-verify your AI agent with DataDome</a> to guarantee uninterrupted access across your protected sites while ensuring legitimate automation operates without friction and automated threats are blocked. </span></p> </div> </div> </div><div class="spu-placeholder" style="display:none"></div><div class="addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content addtoany_content_bottom"><div class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_20 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="https://securityboulevard.com/2026/01/web-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey/" data-a2a-title="Web Bot Auth: Verifying User Identity & Ensuring Agent Trust Through the Customer Journey"><a class="a2a_button_twitter" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/twitter?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityboulevard.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fweb-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey%2F&linkname=Web%20Bot%20Auth%3A%20Verifying%20User%20Identity%20%26%20Ensuring%20Agent%20Trust%20Through%20the%20Customer%20Journey" title="Twitter" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a class="a2a_button_linkedin" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/linkedin?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityboulevard.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fweb-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey%2F&linkname=Web%20Bot%20Auth%3A%20Verifying%20User%20Identity%20%26%20Ensuring%20Agent%20Trust%20Through%20the%20Customer%20Journey" title="LinkedIn" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityboulevard.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fweb-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey%2F&linkname=Web%20Bot%20Auth%3A%20Verifying%20User%20Identity%20%26%20Ensuring%20Agent%20Trust%20Through%20the%20Customer%20Journey" title="Facebook" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a class="a2a_button_reddit" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/reddit?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityboulevard.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fweb-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey%2F&linkname=Web%20Bot%20Auth%3A%20Verifying%20User%20Identity%20%26%20Ensuring%20Agent%20Trust%20Through%20the%20Customer%20Journey" title="Reddit" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a class="a2a_button_email" href="https://www.addtoany.com/add_to/email?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurityboulevard.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fweb-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust-through-the-customer-journey%2F&linkname=Web%20Bot%20Auth%3A%20Verifying%20User%20Identity%20%26%20Ensuring%20Agent%20Trust%20Through%20the%20Customer%20Journey" title="Email" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share_save addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share"></a></div></div><p class="syndicated-attribution">*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from <a href="https://datadome.co">DataDome</a> authored by <a href="https://securityboulevard.com/author/0/" title="Read other posts by Andrew Hendry">Andrew Hendry</a>. Read the original post at: <a href="https://datadome.co/changelog/web-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust/">https://datadome.co/changelog/web-bot-auth-verifying-user-identity-ensuring-agent-trust/</a> </p>