Botnet and Its Attacks

Among the various forms of malware, botnets are emerging as the most serious threat against cyber security, they are used for malicious purposes such as sending spam, launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, Spying and theft of confidential information, and identity theft. Botnets, are remotely controlled by the attackers, and whose members are located in homes, schools, businesses, and governments around the world. The defining characteristic of botnets is the use of command and control channels through which they can be updated and directed. Survey of botnet and its attacks and also botnet detection and defense are related to passive defense in the field of information technology and one of the important aspects of it, is cyber attacks against our country that mainly have properties of botnets. In this paper, We first discuss fundamental concepts of botnets, then command and control techniques are introduced and finally a brief comparison of these techniques is explained. Subsequently, we introduce several related attacks and malicious operation of botnets and then we point out theirr latest targets, and eventually, some cyber attacks, especially those that are against our country infrastructures have been discussed and according to this study, some discussions are also presented about their similarity to botnet attacks, and finally, conclusions are drawn and recommendations are made.