Introduction
The term Clearnet (also called the surface web) refers to publicly accessible internet content that search engines can index and ordinary browsers can reach without special software or credentials. Because clearnet assets—domains, subdomains, APIs and public services—are visible by design, they form the most exposed part of an organization’s attack surface. That visibility creates opportunities for attackers to discover, profile and exploit weakly protected endpoints at scale, and it forces defenders to protect public services continuously and at Internet scale.
What the Clearnet Is and How It’s Built
At its core, the clearnet consists of DNS-resolvable hostnames, routable IP addresses and services that respond to standard HTTP, HTTPS, and other public protocols. Public web properties typically sit behind a mix of infrastructure components: authoritative DNS, CDNs and anycast networks, edge load balancers, web application stacks and, in many deployments, third-party APIs and content delivery services. The architectural choices that make the clearnet fast and discoverable—public domain names, open ports, and cached content on third-party CDNs—also make it easy to enumerate and probe at scale. Any public endpoint exposes metadata (certificates, headers, robots.txt, open S3 buckets, unauthenticated APIs) that automated tooling can harvest during reconnaissance.
Why Attackers Prioritize the Clearnet
Attackers focus on clearnet assets because they are discoverable and usable as leverage: public endpoints offer large returns with little initial effort. Common motivations include service disruption (DDoS), theft of credentials or content (scraping and data exfiltration), account takeover via credential stuffing, and reconnaissance that feeds more targeted intrusions. Public APIs and websites are particularly valuable: they accept large traffic volumes, they expose business logic, and they often back critical services such as login systems, payment gateways and public data feeds. High-volume bot attacks, automated scraping, and DDoS-for-hire campaigns are practical precisely because clearnet properties are addressable and accessible at Internet scale. Recent large botnet takedowns and multi-terabit assaults show that when attackers turn their attention to public assets, the effects can be immediate and expensive.
Common Attack and Exploitation Patterns on the Clearnet
- DDoS and volumetric disruption - Attackers flood public endpoints (DNS, HTTP, UDP) to saturate bandwidth or exhaust stateful resources. These attacks can be short, intense bursts used as reconnaissance or long, sustained campaigns designed to force costly mitigations. Large botnets and booter services make such capacity affordable to attackers.
- Bot-driven scraping and credential stuffing - Automated clients enumerate site content, harvest email addresses or intellectual property, and attempt reused credentials at scale—a common path to account takeover. Bot behavior is increasingly sophisticated and often masks itself behind valid client patterns.
- API abuse and shadow APIs - Public APIs, both official and undocumented, can be discovered and abused for data exfiltration, inventory harvesting or logic-flaw exploitation. Shadow APIs exposed by mobile apps or misconfigured backends are particularly dangerous because they often lack the protections applied to the main website.
- Reconnaissance to compromise chain - Public endpoints enable automated discovery tools to map subdomains, DNS records, certificate transparency entries and cloud storage misconfigurations. That reconnaissance feeds follow-on attacks: phishing, injection attempts, or targeted exploitation of a poorly patched public component.
Why Defenses on the Clearnet Often Fall Short
Defenses fail for three recurring reasons: incomplete visibility, legacy assumptions, and scale.
- Incomplete inventory - Teams often lack a current, authoritative list of public assets. Hidden subdomains, temporary endpoints spun up for testing, and third-party integrations frequently slip through discovery processes. Without a complete inventory, defenders cannot prioritize protection or detect anomalies.
- Legacy perimeter mindset - Many organizations still treat web assets like internal systems, relying solely on perimeter firewalls or load balancers. Effective protection of the clearnet requires behavioral defenses, bot management, API inspection and the ability to operate at distributed edge locations.
- Scale and automation gaps - The clearnet operates 24×7 and requires continuous, automated defenses. Manual mitigation or high-latency response processes are insufficient when attacks reach terabit scale or when sophisticated bots adapt in minutes.
Defensive Playbook: Practical Mitigations for Public-Facing Web Assets
A layered, visibility-first approach is the foundation: inventory everything, deploy behavioral controls at the edge, protect APIs with schema and rate controls, and operationalize rapid response playbooks. Key mitigations include:
Visibility & asset inventory
Maintain a continuous discovery program that catalogs public domains, subdomains, CDN aliases, third-party endpoints and active APIs. Use domain and certificate transparency monitoring, active scanning and cloud provider inventories to close gaps. Visibility makes prioritization feasible and reduces surprise exposure.
How Radware helps: Radware’s Cloud Network Analytics aggregates traffic metadata and helps identify unexpected public endpoints and traffic spikes, while integrated WAF application mapping can surface previously untracked API endpoints during auto-learning.
Bot and automated traffic management
Profile and manage automated clients with a layered bot program: device and behavior fingerprinting, intent analysis, and graduated mitigation (rate-limit, challenge, block). Bot controls should distinguish benign crawlers from malicious automation used for scraping, ATO and API abuse.
How Radware helps: Radware Bot Manager uses AI-driven behavior analysis and fingerprinting to reveal and mitigate sophisticated bot campaigns against both web pages and APIs, protecting revenue-critical pages and reducing false positives.
DDoS and volumetric protection at the edge
Plan for capacity: push volumetric absorptive capability to the network edge with anycast distribution and scrubbing centers so attacks are mitigated as close to source as practical. Combine edge behavior detection with cloud scrubbing and automate diversion for overflow scenarios.
How Radware helps: Radware’s Cloud DDoS Protection Service provides hyperscale scrubbing via a global network of PoPs and advanced behavioral engines for both infrastructure and web DDoS protection, while on-prem devices such as DefensePro offer low-latency stateful defenses for latency-sensitive assets.
API protection & content-abuse controls
Protect APIs with schema validation, positive security models, strict rate controls and anomaly detection. Treat API endpoints as first-class assets: discover them, instrument them with monitoring, and apply tailored access controls and quotas.
How Radware helps: Cloud WAF offers API-aware inspection and adaptive policy tuning, and the Cloud Application Protection Service bundles WAF, API protection and bot defenses to provide unified visibility and enforcement across web and API traffic.
Operational readiness & incident response
Pre-authorize diversion and scrubbing, maintain runbooks for escalations, and conduct tabletop exercises with cross-functional teams (NOC, SOC, legal and comms). Instrument logging and telemetry for post-incident forensics and lessons learned.
How Radware helps: Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) and managed services accelerate mitigation tuning and coordination during complex events. In addition, Cloud Network Analytics supplies forensics and dashboards to shorten the incident lifecycle. These capabilities help teams shift from ad hoc firefighting to practiced, measurable response.
Operational Checklist for Public-Facing Asset Owners
- Maintain a canonical inventory of public domains, subdomains and APIs; scan for shadow APIs and stale endpoints.
- Enforce API quotas, authentication, and proper CORS policies; apply schema validation where possible.
- Deploy bot management on login, checkout and API endpoints; measure and tune to minimize false positives.
- Pre-authorize scrubbing and escalation with ISPs and cloud providers; test diversion procedures.
- Integrate web-edge telemetry into SIEM/NDR and schedule tabletop exercises twice a year.
Future Outlook & Key Takeaways
The clearnet will remain the primary battleground for many web-centric attacks: public APIs proliferate with mobile and IoT growth, and bot automation becomes more capable as attackers adopt AI techniques. Organizations should treat public web assets as critical infrastructure—continuously discover, defend and exercise response playbooks. In short: keep your public inventory current, apply behavioral and API-aware protections at the edge, and ensure operational readiness for rapid mitigation. When defenders combine these measures with vendor-grade scrubbing capacity and continuous intelligence, they materially reduce risk and preserve availability even under large-scale attack scenarios.
To learn more about how Radware can safeguard your organization from clearnet-exposed threats, including DDoS attacks, bot traffic, and API abuse, contact us now.