What is a Botnet?
"I've read warnings about getting caught up in a botnet, but I still don't understand the danger. Can you explain in simple terms what a botnet is, and how to avoid them?"
Warning, Danger: Botnets!
Okay, here's the scoop... a botnet is a collection of ordinary home and office computers that have been compromised by rogue software. The term "botnet" is short for "robot network" and describes the situation rather well. Computers that have been caught up in a botnet have been effectively taken over, and can be used to perform almost any task by the person or persons who control the botnet. Botnets are controlled by criminals and other miscreants whose motives include selling products, operating financial scams and crippling websites through coordinated attacks.
Should you be concerned about botnets? Yes, because botnets operate silently, and your computer may be affected without you ever suspecting it. Botnets are everywhere. It is estimated that over 30 million "zombie" computers are unknowingly caught up in these networks that distribute spam, steal personal information and participate in denial of service attacks. Botnets are carefully planned to spread via viral infections and other malicious software. They use email and P2P (peer to peer) technology to spread to other computers. Once your PC is infected, it may attempt to spread the botnet code to others on a local network in a home or office setting.
Botnets are most often used to spew massive quantities of spam, which is where most of the "enhance your body part," porn offers and phishing scams come from. But since the botnet code runs with full privileges on the infected computer, it can be used to gather sensitive information from businesses, political groups or governments. Sometimes, the attacks are used to damage or take down a competitor's website by flooding it with emails or web connections. These attacks can be hard to defend against, because the attacking computers are spread all over the Internet.
Bots can also be used as agents for mass identity theft. This happens through phishing emails that appear to be from a legitimate company in order to convince the user to submit personal information and passwords. Be especially wary of emails claiming to be from eBay, Paypal, banks or the government. Never click on email links to access these sites -- always use your bookmark or key it in directly.
How to Avoid Botnets
You are most likely to get sucked into a botnet if you do these things:
- Fail to keep your computer updated with security fixes
- Fail to use a good spam filter.
- Fail to use anti-spyware, anti-virus and firewall protection
- Clicking on dubious links in spam emails or shady websites
Use good security practices outlined in the links above, and avoid suspicious emails, especially unexpected messages with subject tags related to holidays, celebrities or current events. Watch out for phishing scams, never click on (or buy!) anything advertised in a spam email, and when in doubt, just don't click.
How to Detect and Remove Botnet Infections
It's difficult to detect if your computer has been caught up in a botnet. If you notice that your computer is sluggish, that *may* be a sign that you are affected. (For related reading, see Make Windows XP Run Faster.) But in general, if you have been affected by a botnet, you've got some sort of malware infection. Install good anti-virus and anti-spyware software (refer to the links above), and it should detect, take care of, or prevent the problem.
Have you had experience with a botnet on your computer? Post your comments and questions below...
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Posted by Bob Rankin on July 29, 2008 02:44 AM
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Article information: AskBobRankin -- What is a Botnet? (Posted: July 29, 2008 02:44 AM)
Source: http://askbobrankin.com/what_is_a_botnet.html
Copyright © 2005 - Bob Rankin - All Rights Reserved
Most recent comments on "What is a Botnet?"
(See all 12 comments for this article.)Posted by:
Dotan Cohen
04 Aug 2008
@Annie: There is no paid version of Firefox. I suspect that you have been ripped off. That is actually rather common.
@Herrick: You should look into SPF to protect your email address from being spoofed.
More good botnet info here:
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/botnet.html
Posted by:
Kathy Ames
06 Aug 2008
Re: Post by Robert Herrick 03 Aug 2008
This has happened to me a couple of times in recent months via my work e-mail account. I get a slew of "undeliverables" supposedly sent from my account, but only over a period of a couple of days, then things settle down. This account is actually a Gmail account, so I knew my machine was not hijacked, but I was still horrified the first time it happened and call my IT Dept immediately. They said this is a form of something called "joe jobbing" and there's not much you can do about it. Basically a spammer uses your return address for a day or so, then moves on to another return address. If you Google search "joe jobbing" you'll get the history of the term -- it's actually quite an interesting story!
Posted by:
Bruce
06 Aug 2008
I've been using the spamarrest spam filtering service (spamarrest.com) for close to a year now, and have nothing but praise for this service. Designed specifically to keep bot generated spam from your system, its well worth the modest subscription fee. For the record, I'm not affiliated with spamarrest in any way other than as a satisfied customer.
Posted by:
Amy B
09 Aug 2008
I get the impression from this that there's little you can do once your computer has been hijacked and placed in service as a botnet--is that correct? I do have an anti-virus program and several anti-spyware programs, but lately my computer is running slower than before, and i've wondered if I have the botnet problem. Won't anti-virus software find the problem and remove it?
Also, you say above that " your computer may be affected without you ever suspecting it." Is that even if you run an antivirus program? What makes these programs so hard to detect?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Sorry if I wasn't clear on that point... If you have a good anti-virus and anti-spyware program, it should take care of (or prevent) the problem.
Posted by:
Lisa Zimmerman
09 Aug 2008
to Annie: I use a shareware spam filter called SpamSieve on my iMac. The Mail program's spam filter is, well, really bad. I was so pleased with SpamSieve I actually PAID for it. :)
Regarding Gmail, maybe I'm just paranoid, but it IS offered by a company whose business it to collect information. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
EDITOR'S NOTE: So you trust Microsoft? If you run Windows, MS has COMPLETE control over your computer. Same with Mac OS and Apple.
Posted by:
Alexander (Sandy) Jankowski
21 Aug 2008
I've been spoiled by you, to the point I found myself looking for stuff in your article that wasn't there. To be exact, I was looking for information to at least help me determine whether a botnet was present -- if not also how to rid myself of one.
Someone I know has someone he knows whose Outlook running under Vista is behaving suspiciously: "When it first opened it was fine but after a few minutes outlook had a couple of send and receive processes going then 3 then 4 and none ever finished, also noticed that it kept trying to send 4 msgs when the outbox was empty." I was hoping to pass on more information (and look like a hero). Oh well...
EDITOR'S NOTE: I tried to clarify that in a comment, but in a nutshell, if you have been affected, you've got some sort of malware infection. Install good anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and it should detect, take care of, or prevent the problem.
Posted by:
Jerry
30 Aug 2008
My XP laptop has become very lethargic, most of the time. Have done the "Making XP Run Faster" stuff. Am running AVG antivirus, Counter Spy, SPF, RegCure, doing defrags, Disk Cleanup.
When I watch Windows Task Manager, it seems the CPU is very busy, but I get very few cycles. On initial boot, CPU stays low, but then picks up to near 100%. I've heard of "worms" that embed in System Restore, so that they restart each time the system boots. Ideas, other than buying another machine? I must do something!
EDITOR'S NOTE: When you look at Task Mgr, what process is consuming the CPU?
Posted by:
Jerry
02 Sep 2008
Re: Post 30 Aug. Monitor_DL.exe, firefox.exe even though there is no apparent activity,explorer.exe, taskmgr.exe about 10%. About 52 processes running. Where can I learn what each of the processes is doing? Most are at 0.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The best way is to type the name of the process into Google, and see if it's a known malware threat.
Posted by:
Matt
24 Jul 2009
Alot of the newest botnet malware these days is very hard to detect... they used very advanced techniques to rootkit themselves into your computer and hide from taskmanager, even running underneath microsoft's kernel core process. So only the best AV companies can sometimes get newer ones, and thats only analysing them (which can take days or weeks). Your AV usually won't protect you if the virus is an advanced one and has only just been 'released'.
Alot of the time the ONLY way to know if you've been infected is if your antivirus is able to detect it, otherwise you won't notice a thing, not even a drop in system performance; until the attacker decides your computer should do something for him.
I think the best defense is to have a fully updated system (make sure your Operating System and browser are fully updated) and to make sure you only ever download and install things you fully trust and can authenticate. Even your friends might have been unknowningly infected and can send you malware unwittingly! This is one of the most common ways of viruses spreading, because we trust links our friends give us.
The days where you can do whatever you want and rely on your AntiVirus to clean-up after you are gone, you have to be reasonably careful whenever on the internet. But alot of people are paranoid these days too. -_-
Posted by:
Dazzle666
30 Aug 2009
I recently got my internet bill and it said i went 23GB over my monthly limit, which is impossible as i all ready have 20GB allowance!
I have avast free home virus protection, and occasionally run the MS malicious software tool removal but find no problems.
What could cause this massive use of my bandwidth and how can i stop it? i recently joined a Yahoo group and have been bombarded with Emails advertizing free sex vids etc etc.