Botnet

A network of zombie computers

A botnet is a network of compromised systems infected with bots or backdoors, which can be controlled centrally by a botherder.

These networks are built up by campaigns of spammed-out trojans or worms and are used for malicious purposes, usually for financial gain. As well as expanding the botnet by sending out malicious code to infect new victims, the botnet can be used to send spam, host or visit websites, and even join forces in massive DDoS attacks, all of which can be profitable for the botherder.

Related news articles

Botnets becoming more robust

Zeus botnet used Amazon's in-the-cloud service to control bots.

15 December 2009

Take-down of rogue ISP sees temporary drop in spam levels

Spam levels back to normal within a few days.

28 August 2009

Yxe trojan infecting mobile phones

Symbian software-signing slipup certifies SMS spambot.

21 July 2009

McColo shutdown not felt the same by all recipients

Mailbox-level reduction may depend on spam detection methods.

21 July 2009

Five botnets responsible for 75% of spam sent

Each infected machine sends spam at rate of almost two messages per second.

16 July 2009

  see all related news stories


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