Botnet - Types of Attacks

Types of Attacks

• In distributed denial-of-service attacks, multiple systems submit as many requests as possible to a single Internet computer or service, overloading it and preventing it from servicing legitimate requests. An example is an attack on a victim's phone number. The victim is bombarded with phone calls by the bots, attempting to connect to the internet.
• Adware advertises a commercial offering actively and without the user's permission or awareness, for example by replacing banner ads on web pages with those of another advertiser.
• Spyware is software which sends information to its creators about a user's activities – typically passwords, credit card numbers and other information that can be sold on the black market. Compromised machines that are located within a corporate network can be worth more to the bot herder, as they can often gain access to confidential corporate information. Several targeted attacks on large corporations aimed to steal sensitive information, such as the Aurora botnet.
• E-mail spam are e-mail messages disguised as messages from people, but are either advertising, annoying, or malicious.
• Click fraud occurs when the user's computer visits websites without the user's awareness to create false web traffic for personal or commercial gain.
• Fast flux is a DNS technique used by botnets to hide phishing and malware delivery sites behind an ever-changing network of compromised hosts acting as proxies.
• Brute-forcing remote machines services such as FTP, SMTP and SSH.
• Worms. The botnet focuses on recruiting other hosts.
• Scareware is software that is marketed by creating fear in users. Once installed, it can install malware and recruit the host into a botnet. For example users can be induced to buy a rogue anti-virus to regain access to their computer.
• Exploiting systems by observing users playing online games such as poker and see the players' cards.