First, you should know what a botnet is (See my post here).

AVG has a great short list in a good, but long article on botnets. Here are their recommendations to keep you from being part of a botnet:

• Don't download things you don't trust
• Don't click online ads
• Don't fall for phishing emails
• Keep a powerful AntiVirus on your computer

So what do you do if it's too late? What if your computer is showing the symptoms of being part of a Botnet (See blog post here).

• Reset your computer to factory settings

• Scan your computer with a Bootable AntiVirus (I use Kasperky's).

There's also something really comforting that the folks at AVG wrote, "That said, don’t worry too much about it. The average botnet infection has a lifespan that a housefly would pity, with 58% of infections lasting less than a day, and only 0.9% of them lasting longer than a week. So don’t rip out your hair out over it." But this of course requires you to have a good AV on your computer that's current!

Great quote from Kasperky Labs we need to remember when we're thinking about cybercriminals, "The main goal of cybercriminals is not to make a cyber-disaster just for kicks, but to earn money." These guys don't create viruses for the sake of creativity, they want your money and they will do what it takes to get it. They are also wicked smart (pun intended), at least some of them.

Oftentimes they will use software that makes your computer their slave, but has little effect on your computers performance. This is when your computer becomes a "bot" and when they have hundreds and thousands of these, it's called a "botnet." Here's a link to a botnet that had over 770,000 computers (Click Here)

So what do these botnets do? Lots of things. These botnets can gather your information and then the master collects the data and sells it (See post here for an example). They can also be used to issue a Denial of Service attack at whoever the master wants to take down. They can also be used to brute force passwords and mine cryptocurrency.

So how do you defend against a botnet? That's what we'll tackle in the next blog post.