Botnet

A botnet is a network of compromised hosts, used for sending spam, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, large scale financial fraud and other similar activities.

Botnets are generally constructed from poorly maintained home or office computers, through initial compromisation using a worm.

A botnet's power comes in the form of their size. Long-standing, successful botnets have been recorded as having hundreds of thousands of hosts, giving them not only a huge processing power, but also a dangerously high amount of bandwidth.

Last updated on 18 October 2008, at 18:43.