Botnet

A botnet is a collection of software agents, or robots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is most commonly associated with IRC bots and more recently malicious software, but it can also refer to a network of computers using distributed computing software

The main drivers for botnets are for recognition and financial gain. The larger the botnet, the more ‘kudos’ the herder can claim to have among the underground community. The bot herder will also ‘rent’ the services of the botnet out to third parties, usually for sending out spam messages, or for performing a denial of service attack against a remote target. Due to the large numbers of compromised machines within the botnet huge volumes of traffic (either email or denial of service) can be generated. However, in recent times the volumes of spam originating from a single compromised host have dropped in order to thwart anti-spam detection algorithms – a larger number of compromised hosts send a smaller number of messages in order to evade detection by anti-spam techniques.

Botnets have become a significant part of the Internet, albeit increasingly hidden. Due to most conventional IRC networks taking measures and blocking access to previously-hosted botnets, controllers must now find their own servers. Often, a botnet will include a variety of connections and network types. Sometimes a controller will hide an IRC server installation on an educational or corporate site where high-speed connections can support a large number of other bots. Exploitation of this method of using a bot to host other bots has proliferated only recently.

1. A botnet operator sends out viruses or worms, infecting ordinary users' computers, whose payload is a malicious application—the bot.
2. The bot on the infected PC logs into a particular C&C server (often an IRC server, but, in some cases a web server).
3. A spammer purchases the services of the botnet from the operator.
4. The spammer provides the spam messages to the operator, who instructs the compromised machines via the IRC server, causing them to send out spam messages.

Botnets are exploited for various purposes, including denial-of-service attacks, creation or misuse of SMTP mail relays for spam (see Spambot), click fraud, spamdexing and the theft of application serial numbers, login IDs, and financial information such as credit card numbers.

The botnet controller community features a constant and continuous struggle over who has the most bots, the highest overall bandwidth, and the most "high-quality" infected machines, like university, corporate, and even government machines.