A denial of service attack is probably the most well known kind of attack using botnets. But for $200, you can put 10,000 computers around the world to work on whatever nefarious purpose you prefer.
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When you log into a site like an online bank or Facebook, you are connecting to a secure web application—a piece of code that runs on the web and handles the secure transfer of information such as a password. With an application installed on a phone or computer, hackers would need to reverse-engineer (i.e. figure out how it works from what it does) the code to learn how it works. But a web app’s code is visible to anyone who looks so web browsers can run them. Hackers seeking to crack systems can look at that code and write scripts to exploit it—maybe they purchased some of the credit card info stolen from Target, for instance, and want to exploit the code at an online shopping site to make as many online purchases as fast as they can. Or perhaps, unbeknownst to you, some malware is tracking your keystrokes as you log into your bank account.
Read more at http://qz.com/168264/this-start-up-turned-hackers-greatest-trick-around-on-the-to-make-botnets-obsolete/
“By preventing automation against any website’s user interface, Shape’s technology allows enterprises to block dozens of attack categories, such as account takeover, application DDoS, and Man-in-the-Browser, with a single product. This is not only a powerful new tool for enterprises but a potentially disruptive technology for multiple sectors of the cybersecurity industry.”
Robert Lentz, former Chief Information Security Officer of the United States Department of Defense