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Beware: Robots are Taking Over

Perhaps I am having a hang over from watching Transformers The Movie. I admit that I am like a kid, when there is a movie that I like so much, I watch it over and over and I do not care if people around me get annoyed with seeing the show on DVD.

But I am not talking about the likes of Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee (which by the way, I remember in my childhood that Bumble Bee was a Volkswagen beetle car and not the kind of car in the movie). I am talking about bots, those tiny piece of code that attacks computers and multiple very fast that when a take over happens, the computer turns into a zombie.

Today, there is an alarming invasion of bots more than ever before. According Symantec’s latest internet security threat report (ISTR), more than six million personal computers are infected with bots and the number is fast rising.

Robots, or bots or web bots as they as popular known, are malwares controlled by a botmaster. Bots are part of a huge network of infected computers and the network is called a botnet.

Since infected personal computer become zombies, the computer can do many things on its own, or to put it more aptly, under the control of the malware. This means that zombie robots can do the bidding of its master.

Bots can sneak into the computer in many ways. Bots commonly spread over the internet by searching for unprotected, vulnerable computers. They can also be attached to emails as Trojan horse or sneak into peer to peer file sharing. Once they break into the computers, the lurk there in silence, doing their tasks of making zombie commands like sending spasm and viruses on the infected computer and then sending information update to their masters somewhere in the dark corners of the internet. Many bots are programmed to steal private information on the computer like bank credentials, usernames, passwords and credit card numbers.

Bots are also culprits in denial of service attacks (DoS) which is done by flooding a target server with requests until it is overloaded and stops granting services to other users.

One can sense the presence of bots when the computer processes unusually and suspiciously slow.

The best way to protect a computer from bots is install security software applications. Anti virus can detect bots and eliminate them. It is strongly advised that the anti virus software should be constantly updated as virus and bots and other malicious software are constantly in strain and in types.

Another way to protect the computer from bots is by installing a firewall. A firewall is a piece of software that filters income and outgoing access and alarms you of suspicious access.

Setting the security settings in the web browser can also help filter out malicious codes. Also, patching some problems with the operating system can ensure that the holes of the OS are sealed so that malicious codes cannot break in.