Botnets, networks of hundreds or even thousands of infected machines, aren't going away anytime soon. They can be used to wreak real havoc, including spamming and theft of financial and identity-related data, but they are capable of much more. They are on the brink of a technological leap to more resilient architectures and more sophisticated encryption that includes peer-to-peer networks that will make it much harder to track, monitor and disable them. With a P2P botnet, there is no centralized point for command and control. Each node in the network acts as both client and server, eliminating the central chokepoint. Individual nodes can be knocked offline, but the gaps in the network will be closed without the loss affecting the botnet's operation or the attacker's control. One of the most efficient ways for enterprises to address the bot problem is to blacklist malicious sites and hosts and block access to them. Botnet watchers are also seeing a trend toward stronger encryption, which is used by attackers to ensure that bots added to the network are in fact legitimate, as opposed to being nodes belonging to researchers working to infiltrate a botnet and block it or take it down.
Read more about the threat of botnets:
- read the article at eWeek
ALSO: read this on how trojans bolster botnet powers
