Botnets: The Web Boogeyman Is Here
Next to anonymity, automation is a cybercriminal’s best friend. Botnets—a network of compromised computers on the Internet under the command and control of a single computer—are a game-changer for e-fraudsters. Cybercriminals with a sufficiently large botnet have the potential computing power equivalent to a supercomputer at their disposal. A botnet can originate fraudulent transactions from many different computers from all over the world, making it harder to recognize fraud patterns through traditional velocity checks. There are a myriad of ways to exploit a botnet that I’ll describe in a minute, but first a little grounding on the world of bots and botnets.
