Class 8, Botnets & Zombie Networks

Class 8, Botnets & Zombie Networks

  

Up until now during our class periods, we have focused our cue in learning about the client-server network architecture. Client-server is often referred as the "classic" network architecture. Yet, there are relatively newborn and/or different network architectures, such as the peer-to-peer (P2P) and distributed computing architectures. In this blog post, I would like to elaborate and explain further details regarding the topic of Botnets and zombie networks.

 

  A botnet is comprised of internet connected applications that communicate with synonymous and/or highly similar programs, for the purpose of performing tasks. The etymology of "Botnet" comes from a mere combination of the two words, robot and network. The botnets can be utilized to send spam mails or participate in DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. Due to such qualities, the word botnet often carries a negative, or detrimental nuance. The Norton Security considers Bots as "one of the most complicated and popular types of cybercrime today." Bots allow hackers to manipulate multiple computers, eventually allowing them to turn individual computers into a zombie computer. A zombie computer operates as a component of the bot networks to spread spams, viruses, and other detrimental factors into computers. Online crimes and frauds are facilitated through the usage of botnets and zombie computers.

  The size of the botnet is critical. Some botnets can have more than thousands of zombie computers, while there are also small ones, comprised of merely ten computers. Many of these computers infection state is unbeknownst to the actual users. Bots are spread out in the internet in forms of different malwares. Bots hide themselves until they are pin-pointed to attack, or basically carry out a simple task. For protection against bots, individual computer and internet users should always configure the software settings to be up to date, limit user rights, reinforce internet user security settings, never click on dubious attachments in emails and obvious spams, and many more.