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| Zolved TechNews |
botnet - What's up with that?
Our "What's up with that?" series covers botnets and botherders.
The FBI released a report that "identified over 1 million victim computer IP addresses" of botnets. In January, Vint Cerf (he's like an old-school computer guy) told the World Economic Form that there are 600 million computers on the Internet and 150 million of them might be participants in a botnet.
What's up with that?
Well, "botnet" is short for Robot Network. A bad guy hacker will search for computers on the Internet that are not secure and they'll load their evil program onto it. The program is called malware, for malicious software. This program hides away on your computer, without you noticing, and waits for instructions from the bad guy hacker (referred to as a "bot herder", but without the space). This is probably how most spam on the Internet is generated. Instead of having the evil program on his machine, he puts it on a whole bunch of other machines and sends instructions from where ever he wants.
The Feds suggest "... updating anti‐virus software, installing a firewall, using strong passwords, practicing good email and web security practices. Although this will not necessarily identify or remove a botnet currently on the system, this can help to prevent future botnet attacks."
On a side note, if you have a machine that's part of a botnet, it's officially referred to as a zombie computer. So at least it has cool name.
What's up with that?
Well, "botnet" is short for Robot Network. A bad guy hacker will search for computers on the Internet that are not secure and they'll load their evil program onto it. The program is called malware, for malicious software. This program hides away on your computer, without you noticing, and waits for instructions from the bad guy hacker (referred to as a "bot herder", but without the space). This is probably how most spam on the Internet is generated. Instead of having the evil program on his machine, he puts it on a whole bunch of other machines and sends instructions from where ever he wants.
The Feds suggest "... updating anti‐virus software, installing a firewall, using strong passwords, practicing good email and web security practices. Although this will not necessarily identify or remove a botnet currently on the system, this can help to prevent future botnet attacks."
On a side note, if you have a machine that's part of a botnet, it's officially referred to as a zombie computer. So at least it has cool name.
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