As per the commands of botmasters, the botnets hijack a large number of computers to perform illegal tasks. Such power enables online attackers to commit different crimes online. Most often, these crimes are undetected and can damage your organization’s reputation in no time. For instance, in 2016, a specific botnet was used for creating DDoS attacks, affecting lots of social media websites like Twitter. If you receive a lot of emails every day, the chances are that your email address is known to spammers. Igor Gamanenko, the Semalt Customer Success Manager, says that luckily, we have a good number of spam-filtering technologies, most of which help prevent the arrival of illegal and suspicious messages.
We cannot ignore the fact that it’s almost impossible to get rid of botnets and spam emails. The FBI investigated the US Senate’s subcommittee with the view to identify infected computers. As a result, this investigation showed that hackers could take control over subcommittee computers whenever they want. Despite the magnitude of this issue, the average computer users tend to know nothing about botnets. Botnets are the army of computer and mobile devices that are infected by malware and compromised to perform online crimes, without the user knowledge. Hackers, in their turn, can command the botnets remotely and ask them to steal sensitive information, spread malware, send spam emails, and launch DDoS attacks.
Sending spam and distributing viruses and malware
First of all, you should know everything about spam. It is designed to send you stupid and annoying emails. Some compromised computers are tasked to send spam messages to a large number of email addresses. The purpose of these spam emails is spreading viruses and distributing malware on the internet. You may become the victim of such emails as the products they offer seem to be of high quality and such that are reasonably priced, but such campaigns are beneficial only for the hackers, and you cannot get any benefits from them. For instance, if you receive emails from a Nigerian user claiming that you have won $140 million, you might want to participate or contact him/her back. These are actually phishing messages that try to trick users and tend to steal your usernames and passwords.
Keep in mind, you should not respond to the spam messages. Plus, you should not click on the email attachments that you are not sure about. The spam email problem has become topical with time, and more and more botnets are becoming active because of it. The vast number of bots is sent to commercial ventures and large organizations for financial gains. Botnets have recently targeted such companies like Evernote and Feedly, and the hackers tried to extort money through the threats of denial-of-service attacks.
Do we need botnet protection?
A computer that has been infected by bots is under the control of the hacker and cannot be controlled by the real owner. It will silently engage in cyber-crimes and may perform a large number of illegal activities. In other words, if your computer is infected, it will not work properly, making the internet an unsafe and unpleasant place for everyone.