What are botnet attacks?

16th May 2025

In March of 2025, a massive botnet consisting of 1.33 million devices* was discovered: can your IT systems defend against something of that magnitude?

Hackers have a range of tools they can use to try to obtain your personal data – a botnet attack is one of them. Here is a step-by-step guide to exactly how they work and what you can do to defend against them:

Infection – by clicking on phishing emails or malicious downloads, bad actors infect devices with malware, often without the user realising.

Control – communication between infected devices – “bots” – is established when they connect to a central server, or in a peer-to-peer network. This allows the “botmaster” to control the whole network of devices.

Execution – now in control, the botmaster has a few options:

· Spam: they can send massive amounts of spam emails from the network of devices, likely landing some victims via malicious links

· Data theft: once inside a device, the bad actor can simply steal sensitive information such as passwords or financial details.

· Cryptojacking: the botmaster can use the power of the interconnected devices to mine for cryptocurrency.

· Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks: using this network, a botmaster can overwhelm a targeted server with the sheer number of traffic coming through, leading to it running poorly or being unable to run altogether.

What can you do to avoid botnet attacks? Have the latest in firewall, EDR and network monitoring in place, all with the most recent updates applied, to give yourself the best chance of staying secure. Keep your apps and programmes up to date and stay aware of the latest threats.

Cyber security awareness training is also essential – if nobody click on the malicious link in the first place, then the device can’t be infected or controlled. For more information on cyber-attacks and how to mitigate them, talk to Interfuture Security.

*https://cybernews.com/security/record-breaking-botnet-leads-surge-in-ddos-attacks/