What is a botnet?
April 24th, 2007 by Randy Stewart, Product Manager
So, we’ve talked about botnets in the recent post, but what exactly is a botnet?
From Wikipedia
While the term “botnet” can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, the word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised, or Zombie computers running programs, usually referred to as worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command and control infrastructure.
How widespread are these botnets? From a recent story from MSNBC, “Internet founding father Vint Cerf dramatically suggested that 150 million computers worldwide may have been hijacked by criminals.
Essentially, botnets are the root of all sorts of computer nastiness, but first and foremost, they seem to be the source of a very large portion of spam on the internet today.
To protect yourself (and others) from botnets, take a look at my post last week, 5 ways to protect your computer from botnets, spyware and other malware.
Here are some resources for learning more about botnets:
May 31st, 2007 at 11:19 am
[...] Robert Soloway was using so-called “Zombie” computers (or botnets) to create his attacks. Federal agents have been quoted as saying that Soloway was responsible for [...]