{"id":1279,"date":"2015-08-07T02:33:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T18:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.bankvaultonline.com\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2015-08-07T02:33:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T18:33:10","slug":"definition-botnets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/","title":{"rendered":"Definition of the Day: Botnets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term botnet<\/strong> is a portmanteau<\/em> that combines the words \u2018robots\u2019 and \u2018network.\u2019 Botnets are a form of illicit distributed computing and are composed of 1000s of hijacked machines that are united and commanded from a single point. They are the foot soldiers of large scale organized cyber crime \u2013 including massive spam campaigns, cyber theft and DDoS attacks. They\u2019re also used for mercenary purposes \u2013 rented out to would be hackers who then use them for their own criminal purposes. <\/p>\n

Bots take over your computer through Trojans \u2013 which (as we\u2019ve now determined) gain access through your computer by a wide variety of techniques including phishing<\/a>, spear phishing<\/a>, piggybacking<\/a> and baiting<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The mother of all botnets would have to be the Kraken botnet of 2008. At the time it was the world\u2019s largest botnet \u2013 infecting 50 of the Fortune 500 companies. At its peak it was sending 9 billion spam emails a day from a network of 495,000 infected computers. It included sophisticated techniques that avoided detection from the world\u2019s top antivirus programs. <\/p>\n

You can protect yourself against botnets by following our 5 best practices<\/a> and by using a anti-virus programs. If you find your computer appears to be running slowly and lagging, you may be infected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term botnet is a portmanteau that combines the words \u2018robots\u2019 and \u2018network.\u2019 Botnets are a form of illicit distributed computing and are composed of 1000s of hijacked machines that are united and commanded from a single point. They are the foot soldiers of large scale organized cyber crime \u2013 including massive spam campaigns, cyber […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346],"tags":[408,263,69],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definition-of-the-day","tag-botnots","tag-definition-of-the-day","tag-trojans"],"yoast_head":"\nDefinition of the Day: Botnets - BankVault<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Definition of the Day: Botnets - BankVault\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The term botnet is a portmanteau that combines the words \u2018robots\u2019 and \u2018network.\u2019 Botnets are a form of illicit distributed computing and are composed of 1000s of hijacked machines that are united and commanded from a single point. They are the foot soldiers of large scale organized cyber crime \u2013 including massive spam campaigns, cyber […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BankVault\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BankVaultOnline\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-08-06T18:33:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"A. Yost\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@bankvaultonline\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@bankvaultonline\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"A. 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They are the foot soldiers of large scale organized cyber crime \u2013 including massive spam campaigns, cyber […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/","og_site_name":"BankVault","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BankVaultOnline\/","article_published_time":"2015-08-06T18:33:10+00:00","author":"A. Yost","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@bankvaultonline","twitter_site":"@bankvaultonline","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"A. Yost","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.bankvault.com\/definition-botnets\/"},"author":{"name":"A. 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