Not all bots are funny and not all of them can be used to chat online, many are exploited by hackers to generate attacks and scams
When we talk about bots almost all of us think of the funny personal assistants that help us on our electronic devices. From Siri to Telegram chatbots. Yet even bots have their own dark side. In fact, there are several cyber criminals who exploit them to implement cyber attacks and online scams.
Like any malware, bots are also divided into several large families, each of which is used by hackers for a specific attack. For example, there are SPAM and SPIM bots, which may sound funny, but they are not funny at all. SPAM bots are used to clog the victim's inbox with malicious advertisements. While SPIM bots send continuous unsolicited instant messages to the infected device. In practice, if we fall into the trap of these two bo,t using our computer or smartphone will be almost impossible because every action we take will be interrupted by unwanted advertisements and messages.
Zombie Bots
Zombie bots are among the most dangerous and among the most widespread, given also the growth of DD0S (Distributed Denial-of-Service) type hacker attacks. They are used by a hacker to keep control of the infected computer in order to turn it into a tool to feed a botnet. These bots are very difficult to detect and remove. Often the victims continue to use the PC without even knowing that they have fallen into the hands of a hacker.
Bots with malicious files
When we turn to an online peer-to-peer service it is easy to come across malicious bots. The intent of these bots is to make us download malware. When we search for a movie or song to save on our device, these bots provide us with what we are looking for based on our requests. Of course, we will not watch any movie or listen to any song because the file we download is a virus that will infect our computer.
Bots for Scams
There are also simple bots created by cyber criminals to spread their scams on the Internet. They contact the user via email or on messaging apps and try to scam him with a series of messages about winnings, especially from smartphones or lottery. If the user clicks on the link it infects his device.
How to defend yourself
To detect a bot it is often necessary to turn to a scanner service external to our antivirus. Among the best ones on the market is Malwarebytes. Let's remember then to pay a lot of attention on social networks, emails and messaging applications. Never trust messages of winnings or similar. At any moment there could be a hacker or bot on the other side of the screen acting for him.