Unexplained Bot Surge Linked to Lanzhou IP Addresses Disrupts Global Websites

Across the digital landscape, a wave of unexplained bot traffic is disrupting services from small publishing platforms to critical U.S. government portals, with forensic analysis tracing the origin to a cluster of IP addresses in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. The surge, first detected in late January 2026, has prompted widespread security alerts and automated CAPTCHA challenges on websites protected by Cloudflare, BunkerWeb, and other bot-detection systems.

According to a technical analysis published by AITopics.org, the traffic exhibits characteristics of highly coordinated, low-latency requests—far exceeding typical web crawlers or scrapers. The pattern is not random; it targets login pages, API endpoints, and content management systems, often bypassing standard rate-limiting protocols. "This isn’t just noise," said Dr. Elena Vasquez, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for Digital Threat Intelligence. "The timing, persistence, and targeting suggest a deliberate reconnaissance operation, possibly mapping vulnerabilities across a broad digital footprint."

One of the most visible impacts has been on Wave Financial, a popular small business accounting platform. Users attempting to access the login portal at my.waveapps.com have been met with Cloudflare’s security verification screens, with Ray ID 9ccf998b2d2c3b41 logged during peak traffic hours. While the main site, www.waveapps.com, remains accessible, the login infrastructure has experienced intermittent outages, forcing users to repeatedly complete CAPTCHA challenges. "We’ve seen a 400% spike in bot-triggered verification requests over the past two weeks," confirmed a Wave Financial spokesperson in an internal memo obtained by this outlet. "Our team is working with Cloudflare to refine our bot rules, but the source remains obfuscated."

Similar disruptions have been reported by federal agencies, including the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where automated requests have overloaded public-facing forms and data portals. In each case, the traffic originates from IP ranges registered to China Telecom’s Lanzhou branch. Notably, these IPs show no association with known malicious botnets like Mirai or Mirai variants, and none have been flagged in global threat intelligence databases such as AbuseIPDB or VirusTotal.

Analysts are now weighing several hypotheses. One theory suggests the traffic is part of a state-sponsored or state-tolerated effort to map global digital infrastructure for future cyber operations. Another posits that it may be a commercial operation—possibly a data aggregator scraping public-facing financial or administrative data for AI training purposes. A third, less likely theory, involves a misconfigured Chinese AI research project inadvertently generating excessive outbound requests.

"The absence of destructive payloads, malware, or credential stuffing makes this unusual," noted a senior analyst at Recorded Future, speaking anonymously. "This isn’t about breaking in. It’s about seeing how many doors are open—and how long they stay open."

As of early February 2026, no group has claimed responsibility. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an advisory urging organizations to monitor for anomalous traffic from Chinese IP ranges and to implement behavioral analysis tools beyond IP blacklisting. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have not responded to requests for comment.

The incident underscores a growing challenge in cybersecurity: distinguishing between benign automation and covert surveillance. As AI-driven bots become more sophisticated, defenders must shift from static rules to dynamic behavioral modeling. For now, websites continue to rely on CAPTCHA walls and rate-limiting—temporary fixes against a threat that may be probing the very foundations of the open web.