Cybercrime

Abstract

 A botnet (short for robot network) is made up of computers communicating with each other over the internet. A command and control centre uses them to send spam, mount distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (see below) and commit other crimes.  A rootkit is a collection of programmes that enable administrator-level access to a computer or computer network, thus allowing the attacker to gain root or privileged access to the computer and possibly other machines on the same network.  A worm replicates itself over a computer network and performs malicious actions without guidance.  A trojan poses as, or is embedded within, a legitimate programme, but it is designed for malicious purposes, such as spying, stealing data, deleting files, expanding a botnet, and performing DDoS attacks.  A file infector infects executable files (such as .exe) by overwriting them or inserting infected code that disables them.