A botnet (also known as a Zombies army)
is a number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of
it, botnet have been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or
viruses) to other computers on the Internet. Any such computer is referred to
as a zombie, in effect, a computer "robot" or "bot" that
serves the wishes of some master spam or virus originator. Most computers
compromised in this way are home-based. According to a report from
Russian-based Kaspersky Labs, botnet -- not spam, viruses, or worms --
currently pose the biggest threat to the Internet. A report from Symantec came
to a similar conclusion.
Computers that are
cooped to serve in a zombie army are often those whose owners fail to provide effective firewalls and other
safeguards. An increasing number of home users have high speed connections for
computers that may be inadequately protected. A zombie or bot is often created
through an Internet port that has been left open and through which a small Trojan horse program can be left for future activation. At a certain
time, the zombie army "controller" can unleash the effects of the
army by sending a single command, possibly from an Internet Relay Channel (IRC) site.
The computers that form a botnet can be
programmed to redirect transmissions to a specific computer, such as a Web site
that can be closed down by having to handle too much traffic - a distributed
denial-of-service DDos attack - or, in the case of spam distribution,
to many computers. The motivation for a zombie master who creates a DDos attack
may be to cripple a competitor. The motivation for a zombie master sending spam
is in the money to be made. Both of them rely on unprotected computers that can
be turned into zombies.
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