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Botnet

A botnet is a network of compromised computers – computers that have been compromised with malicious software – also known as zombies. Botnets are probably the most widely known tool in the click fraud perpetrator's toolkit. Bot programs are secretly installed on computers by means of worms, backdoors, Trojan horses, viruses, or other forms of malware. Upon infection, the bot herder, e.g. the fraudster in charge of the botnet, has nearly full control over the infected computer. Botnets are used to wage distributed denial of service attacks (which take down computer systems), send thousands of spam emails from the compromised computers, log keystrokes, and perpetrate click fraud. In the case of click fraud, herders command bots to visit websites – which are either owned by the herder or someone who pays the herder for the service – and click on the ads hosted by those sites. The site owner can thus generate a significant amount of revenue, which is paid out by the ad network or search engine distributing the ads. Large, global botnets generate clicks from many different IP addresses, giving the illusion of legitimate traffic.

Learn More About Botnets:
Anchor Intelligence: Click Fraud Glossary
Shadowserver Foundation: Botnets