What is a Botnet?
The word Botnet is a portmanteau of “robot” and “network.” A Botnet is a network of computer or internet-connected devices that are infected with malware, controlled by hackers, and used to carry out scams and cyberattacks on a large scale. Often, the attacks are DDoS attacks, spamming, or data theft.
Botnets are very versatile and can be used for a wide variety of purposes. The attackers who control them are called bot herders, and they continuously look for ways to improve the botnet’s sophistication. This makes it harder for cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement to disrupt or shut down the botnet.
Once the bot herder has recruited a large number of bots, they send commands to them through a Command and Control (C&C) server. During this phase, the bots execute malicious activities based on the commands they receive.
The bots can infect many types of devices: servers, mobile devices, and IoT devices like smart cameras, printers, routers, or even smart thermostats. They are often vulnerable due to poor security configurations, default or weak passwords, and unpatched software vulnerabilities.
Some of the early warning signs for a device being infected with bot malware include slower-than-normal response times and sluggish applications, which is because the bot malware uses CPU and RAM resources to perform background tasks like DDoS floods or harvesting data. It can also be identified by unusual or high data usage, especially when the device is not in use. Recent bots have evolved to avoid detection by leveraging P2P technologies to communicate. This decentralized model overcomes the centralized drawback of the client-server bot architecture and is difficult to dismantle.