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Rise of the botnets

Armies of zombie computers caused a lot of mayhem in 2018.

In January, one cluster of infected, connected machines attacked the three biggest banks in the Netherlands. The attack crippled computer systems and left customers uncertain about their money. In February, a website for computer programmers, called Github, was knocked offline by a network of tens of thousands of devices. In May, the public train system in Denmark was attacked. Its ticket-selling programs stopped working.

That was just in the first half of the year. The armies of infected devices that caused all this damage are known as robot networks, or simply “botnets.” These attacks happen online, via the internet. And the computer culprits weren’t all owned by criminals. Many were machines owned by regular people but taken over by hackers. Hackers have been using botnets in cyberattacks for more than a decade. Now the botnet armies are getting bigger, smarter and more destructive.

Botnets can use a computer or smart device without the user being aware she’s been hacked.Wavebreakmedia/iStockphoto

2018 was definitely a bad year for botnets. So was 2017. And 2016. And the several years before that. For more than a decade, botnets have been helping hackers commit crimes. They have stolen identities and money. They have attacked trains and banks. They have caused millions of dollars in damage.

Read more about the threat of botnets at Science News for Students, here.