<P> China's Great Cannon of China allows the modification of legitimate web browsing traffic at internet backbones into China to create a large ephemeral botnet to attack large targets such as GitHub in 2015 . </P> <Ul> <Li> Most botnets currently feature distributed denial - of - service attacks in which multiple systems submit as many requests as possible to a single Internet computer or service, overloading it and preventing it from servicing legitimate requests . An example is an attack on a victim's server . The victim's server is bombarded with requests by the bots, attempting to connect to the server, therefore, overloading it . </Li> <Li> Spyware is software which sends information to its creators about a user's activities--typically passwords, credit card numbers and other information that can be sold on the black market . Compromised machines that are located within a corporate network can be worth more to the bot herder, as they can often gain access to confidential corporate information . Several targeted attacks on large corporations aimed to steal sensitive information, such as the Aurora botnet . </Li> <Li> E-mail spam are e-mail messages disguised as messages from people, but are either advertising, annoying, or malicious . </Li> <Li> Click fraud occurs when the user's computer visits websites without the user's awareness to create false web traffic for personal or commercial gain . </Li> <Li> Bitcoin Mining was used in some of the more recent botnets have which include bitcoin mining as a feature in order to generate profits for the operator of the botnet . </Li> <Li> Self - spreading functionality, to seek for pre-configured command - and - control (CNC) pushed instruction contains targeted devices or network, to aim for more infection, is also spotted in several botnets . Some of the botnets are utilizing this function to automate their infections . </Li> </Ul> <Li> Most botnets currently feature distributed denial - of - service attacks in which multiple systems submit as many requests as possible to a single Internet computer or service, overloading it and preventing it from servicing legitimate requests . An example is an attack on a victim's server . The victim's server is bombarded with requests by the bots, attempting to connect to the server, therefore, overloading it . </Li> <Li> Spyware is software which sends information to its creators about a user's activities--typically passwords, credit card numbers and other information that can be sold on the black market . Compromised machines that are located within a corporate network can be worth more to the bot herder, as they can often gain access to confidential corporate information . Several targeted attacks on large corporations aimed to steal sensitive information, such as the Aurora botnet . </Li>

A botmaster can attack and take control of vulnerable one like lan