ABSTRACT
In the beginning, bots, short for “robots,” were neutral entities and nonmalicious. Windows Internet worms entered the wild in the late 1990s, leading to the automation of malicious code. Bots emerged from this landscape. e term “botnets” itself actually appears to have been coined from “robot networks.” e word “robot” has a Czech derivation from the word “robotovat,” which means “to work.”* is is also very similar to the Russian word “rabotat,” which has the same meaning. When formed into groupings of bots, or botnets (networks or groupings of bot-infected computers), the aggregate resources are quite powerful. Botnet, therefore, is an apt definition: bots are highly adaptable worker bees that do their master’s bidding over a broad “net”—in the case of bots, scattered throughout the global Internet.
