The flood of millions of server requests looked like a cyberattack — but something about the pattern was odd: every single request targeted product pages selling RAM.
-
A security company called DataDome has uncovered a fascinating bot attack involving more than 10 million visits to RAM product pages, averaging 550 checks per hour on each individual product listing.
The goal of this attack wasn't to take down the targeted websites — it was to snap up every available stick of RAM and resell it at a tidy profit.
-
One of the unexpected side effects of the AI revolution is that many production lines previously manufacturing RAM for ordinary computers and servers have been retooled to produce RAM for AI servers, where the memory architecture is far more complex and profit margins are significantly higher.
The result is an unprecedented shortage in the RAM market, triggering a wave of price increases across related sectors — graphics cards, gaming consoles, smartphones, and PCs alike.
The bot operators' goal was to scalp RAM by amplifying an already existing shortage and driving prices even higher.
-
This attack had some interesting characteristics.
Normally, a webpage is cached, and repeatedly accessing the same RAM product page will serve the cached version — even if the stock status and price are no longer current.
To always retrieve the latest stock and pricing data, the bots appended random parameters to the product page URL, forcing the site's servers to generate a fresh page rather than serving the cached one. This significantly increased the load on the targeted servers.
The bots also learned to identify the request frequency at which a site would detect the attack and block them, and were careful to send queries at a slightly lower rate. Requests were sent during daytime hours and tapered off at night to mimic human user behavior.
Even so, certain patterns ultimately gave them away — such as navigating directly to product pages without browsing the rest of the site, and maintaining consistent activity even on weekends.
-
In a scarcity economy, the mere fear of shortage drives rapid hoarding, which in turn fuels and fulfills that shortage.
The hardware market appears to be suffering from exactly this phenomenon. And while scalping can be fought at the retail level, it's worth noting that even major PC manufacturers such as Lenovo stockpiled enormous reserves of RAM at low prices — and are nonetheless raising prices in line with market conditions.
Pictured: RAM from Corsair's Dominator series, made by the American manufacturer. One of the most premium and sought-after models on the RAM market.
--
👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more content on science and technology.