What is a Botnet?
A botnet is a group of infected devices that have been taken over by cyber criminals, who use them to launch attacks. This can be for a variety of reasons, including sending spam emails or performing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
A Botnet Attack is a type of malware that involves an inter-connected network of hacked computers that lead back to a centralized computer controlled by a cyber criminal, who can then easily deploy cyber attacks to the entire network. The infected devices can then be used for a variety of automated attacks, such as DDoS, email spam, and data theft.
Bots can also be used to gather information, like passwords and account details, using methods like credential stuffing or a brute force search. This can be useful for future breaches or for selling the bots to other malicious actors.
The architecture of a botnet can vary, but it typically uses the client-server model to communicate with a central controller. This makes it easy to disable the bots, since a law enforcement agency can track the communications back to that server and cut them off.
In recent years, however, more sophisticated bots have adopted a peer-to-peer architecture, which allows them to relay commands without requiring a central C2 server. This allows for takedowns to be focused on the source of malware infections rather than on the technical infrastructure.
Devices that can be co-opted by bot herders include routers, web servers, and even mobile devices. This has exacerbated the problems of IoT security. Fortunately, there are several solutions that can help prevent IoT botnets from infecting devices, while simultaneously detecting and removing them as they infect devices.