Computer Bots | What is a bot? Are bots good or bad?

What is a Bot?

A bot is a program or an application tasked with automatic and repetitive tasks. Bots can run on a device as a useful program or a harmful one. Productive computer bots can be used to carry out repetitive tasks such as scanning files for changes. Chatbots are examples of productive and good bots used to emulate human conversation. Further, shop bots crawl eCommerce websites looking for the best prices. Large organizations can deploy bots monitoring their network activities to provide real-time information on lags, outages, suspicious connections, and more.

Malware Bots

Bad computer bots, also known as malware bots are usually used to carry out cyber crimes, which include spamming, spying, accessing illegal content, launching {DDOS attacks}, engaging in click fraud, and scanning for vulnerabilities. A bot executes predefined tasks without the device owner’s knowledge.

A bot is a single computer infected with a malware bot program. Several infected computers are identified as bots. When several devices are networked with a single malware goal, such as launching a DDOS attack, they form a botnet. A botnet can contain 2, 3, or even hundreds of thousands of infected networked devices.