Why is credential stuffing routed through residential proxies?

Residential proxies make each request appear to originate from an ordinary home internet connection, which defeats both rate limiting (the volume is spread across many addresses) and simple IP reputation checks (the addresses themselves have no prior abuse history). This is precisely why credential stuffing and distributed attacks increasingly rely on this infrastructure rather than datacenter IPs, which are easier to flag.

How does IP category help when the attack is already distributed?

Even when individual IPs look clean, the underlying infrastructure category — residential proxy network, known abuse-list membership, hosting provider misuse — is a signal that survives distribution across many addresses. Enriching logs or edge rules with this category catches the pattern that per-IP volume metrics alone would miss.

Is this a real-time defence or a forensic tool?

Both, depending on where you apply it. Loaded into WAF or CDN rules as files, it evaluates every request in real time with no added latency. Used as a file download for log enrichment or SIEM ingestion, it's a retrospective tool for threat hunting and understanding what already happened — the same underlying data supports both.

Does filtering bot traffic before log ingestion actually save money?

Yes, measurably. Log ingestion is priced by volume in every major SIEM and observability platform, and a meaningful share of raw traffic in front of any sizeable service is automated. Filtering that share out before ingestion, or tagging it clearly on the way in, reduces both the ingestion bill and the noise analysts have to sort through.

Use case · Saas & software

Credential Stuffing & DDoS Source Detection

Automated attacks against authentication endpoints are constant for any platform of size. Credential stuffing in particular is high-volume, distributed, and routed through residential proxies specifically to defeat rate limiting and plain IP reputation.

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Why this defeats rate limiting

Quick answer

Credential stuffing spreads volume across large numbers of residential-proxy IPs specifically to stay under any single-address rate limit. The signal that survives that distribution is infrastructure category, not per-IP request count — which is why supplementary IP intelligence, not more rate limiting, is what actually catches it.

Rate limiting was designed for a concentrated attack: many requests from one place. Residential-proxy-routed credential stuffing is the opposite by design — few requests from each of many places, each address looking like an ordinary home connection with no individual history of abuse.

What doesn't change with distribution is the category of infrastructure being used. A residential proxy network is identifiable as such regardless of how many individual addresses it rotates through.

How IP Raccoon helps

At the edge

WAF & CDN rules

Supplementary IP intelligence loaded as files and evaluated with zero added latency, pulled from a permalink that does not change between releases — complementing whatever reputation lists your WAF already ships with.

In your stack

SIEM & log enrichment

File download for log enrichment: automation and proxy infrastructure context alongside your existing threat sources, so alerts are easier to triage and classify.

Log ingestion is priced by volume in every major SIEM and observability platform — filtering or tagging a meaningful share of bot traffic before ingestion is a measurable, direct cost saving on top of the security benefit.

What to look for in a supplementary threat feed

Independence from your platform's built-in reputation lists — a complement, not a duplicate
Residential proxy coverage specifically, since that's the infrastructure built to defeat IP reputation
Both a file format for edge/SIEM ingestion and an API for real-time checks, since attacks show up in both places
Releases that keep pace with rotating proxy pools, reaching your stack through a permalink instead of a re-integration each time

$ curl -o anonymizers.csv \
  "https://files.ipraccoon.com/download/anonymizers?authorization=$IP_RACCOON_TOKEN&format=csv_plus"

slugs:   reputation · anonymizers · detected_bots · known_bots
formats: csv (subnet) · csv_plus (subnet + subcategory) · mmdb

use:     SIEM ingestion, WAF rules, log enrichment

See the infrastructure behind your login attempts

Enrich your logs or edge rules with IP Raccoon and find the residential-proxy traffic your current tools are missing.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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