For many years, malware authors have been using the web to assemble infected computers into botnets (networks of malware compromised machines), and security professionals and law enforcement systematically work to take these botnets down.

Malware authors have clear objectives: stealing personal information, sending spam, conducting distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and other such criminal activity for profit.

Increasing success in disabling botnets by security professionals has meant malware programmers have had to change their tactics. One such modification has been to use decentralized communications rather than hierarchical structures for controlling botnets. This reduces the risk of a botnet being disabled by removing infected hosts, especially the high-value command-and-control (C&C) servers which coordinate the bots

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