What is a botnet?

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What is a botnet?

A botnet is a collection of software robots that run autonomously and automatically. They run on computers attached to the internet which are compromised by a Trojan horse, a virus or a hacker. The owners of these computers are most of the time unaware of a being part of a botnet. These computers are called Zombies. The ‘herder’ of a botnet can uses his botnet for DDoS attacks, sending spam, click fraud, spamdexing and theft of personal or sensitive information.

A botnet can have a huge number of nodes. The has Dutch Police found a 1.5million node botnet, this indicates the incredible size a botnet can become. The combined resources of 1.5 million nodes can definitely pose a threat to almost any website/webservice. It’s hard to defend against an attack of a botnet because the computers are located all over the world so IP blocking is undoable.