A Short Visit to the Bot Zoo

Abstract

The past year (2004-5) has seen, a new attack trend emerge: bots. After a successful compromise, the attacker installs a bot (also called a zombie or drone) on the system; this small program enables a remote control mechanism to then command the victim. Attackers use this technique repeatedly to form networks of compromised machines (botnets) to further enhance the effectiveness of their attacks. In recent years, malicious bots have become commonplace, with botnets in particular posing a severe threat to the Internet community. Attackers primarily use them for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, mass identity theft, or sending spam.