botnets
So I was doing some google research on just about everything relating to botnets and, after skimming through a bunch of articles and wikipedia pages, i realized that the term "botnet" has a pretty negative connotation (obviously).
But in reality, even though botnets have usually been used to execute DoS and spam attacks, there have to be TONS of good things that can come from them. The computing power contained within a big botnet (such as the Storm Worm) has to be enormous, and whenever there is a huge amount of computing power there also must be the potential to do good.
So my question is this: Have there ever been instances (that are known) in which people have tried establishing a botnet with good intentions?
ps. not sure if this should be in the off-topic forum, but whatever. :D
@ op, Absolutely. There are voluntary ones anyways. I don't know about the masked do-gooders though.
But you can have it so that instead of a screen saver, your computer donates it's resources to find extra terrestrial life, or any other of a million projects. It's essentially the same as a botnet, only you can opt out and control how much you want to give.
If you do that though, make sure you research what it will take to be secure or pick a good botnet. I've only heard about it, I don't have a real internet connection, so I can't do it.
yeah it's possible.
I've read a column in a computer magazine which suggests to turn the infected pcs into either a tor server or a folding@home node.
If i'm not mistaken, japanesedude told me that the botnet must be an exe on the infected computer along with the executable file.
i think i posted a similar topic earlier somewhere on this site.
http://www.hellboundhackers.org/forum/is_it_possible-22-11808_0.html
fuser wrote: If i'm not mistaken, japanesedude told me that the botnet must be an exe on the infected computer along with the executable file. http://www.hellboundhackers.org/forum/is_it_possible-22-11808_0.html
Not true, here's a PHP botnet:
http://www.freewebs.com/haddem/botnetphp.txt
You include it like you would a shell, except it's a botnet. So botnets don't have to be in executable form though it makes it 1000 times easier to distribute.