Bot / Botnet
Several high profile web pages (including Norman's) have been victims of so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks These assaults have been carried out by a set of bot (robot) computers that simultaneously send lots of requests to a special computer or a certain network. The amount of data is so huge that the computer(s) under attack are unable to handle the load, and are thereby rendered inaccessable for their intended, legitimate tasks.
The users of the computers that are parts of such an attack, are often unaware of this fact - thus the computers are often called zombie computers. The person that control the attack - "the brain behind" - is located elsewhere and just presses a key to initiate the attack.
Computers that are part of a network, which itself is controlled by a robot, is often called a botnet.
| Usage | Title | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| The Anatomy of Bots and Botnets |