Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has a very telling article on the spyware and adware industries, and the botnets that are setup to serve them by shady individuals and operations.
The article has an interview of a 21 year old high school dropout who goes by the name of 0x80 who runs a botnet, and 180 Solutions, a company that distributes its pop ads by spyware/adware that is installed by the likes of 0x80.
Although these are bad uses of a botnet, akin to using it to send spam, they are not the worst. Other botnets are used for phishing, the practice of tricking users into giving the credentials for their bank, Paypal or eBay accounts, or demanding a payment lest a denial of service attack be launched on a site.
The article introduces a new job title: botmaster. Like the older terms, hostmaster, then postmaster and more recently webmaster, a new term is coined, albeit it would gain notoriety not fame.
Resource
- Washington Post article: Invasion of the Computer Snatchers by .
- Slashdot discussion on the Washington Post article.
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