The Zombie Apocalypse of the Internet (Now with faster brains!)¶

Imagine an army of mindless drones—your router, your smart fridge, your neighbor’s neglected security camera—all hijacked and waiting for orders. That’s a botnet: a digital horde of compromised devices, ready to unleash chaos at the whim of some shady overlord. Whether it’s DDoS-ing websites into oblivion, secretly mining crypto, or faking ad clicks (because even cybercrime has a gig economy), botnets are the Swiss Army knives of the cyber underworld.

Why Botnets are thriving (Like cockroaches in a data centre)¶

• More Malware = More Zombies: Every new malware family needs its own botnet for command and control (C&C), turning infected devices into a global puppet show.

• Longer “Active Days”: Botnets used to get shut down quickly—now they linger like a bad cold, thanks to smarter infrastructure.

• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) = Faster, Sneakier Attacks: Why manually set up C&C servers when you can automate it with code? Attackers now spin up and tear down botnet infrastructure faster than you can say “Wait, why is my thermostat mining Monero?”

The Botnet lifecycle¶

• Recruitment – Your devices get infected (usually because you ignored one update).

• Command & Control – Hackers remotely order them to attack, mine, or spy.

• Profit – Either via extortion, stolen data, or sheer chaos-induced lulz.