Fighting malware and spam

Bot

Robot program for automating tasks

A bot is a general term for software designed to automate tasks - an electronic robot. Legitimate bots are commonly used as 'web spiders', gathering data for search engines, or to monitor specific sites, such as watching a sales site for bargains or blocking abuse and profanity from a forum or chat system.

A malicious bot is a similar program which resides on an infected system, communicating with a botherder and forming part of a botnet. The bot will usually be implanted by a worm or trojan, which opens a backdoor. The bot then monitors the backdoor for further instructions. These can include sending out spam, hosting malicious websites, probing networks for vulnerabilities, and even downloading updates of its own code.

With their flexibility making them ideal for a variety of malicious purposes, bots are one of the most common tools used by cybercriminals. Many security vendors now provide services to check whether such bots are resident within a network.

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