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.
