How can botnets affect a network?

How can botnets affect a network?

• A. They can improve network throughput.
• B. They can log keystrokes on users.
• C. They can encrypt all traffic.
• D. They can flood a network with messages as a denial of service attack.

Answer: (D)

Botnets affect a network mainly by coordinating many compromised devices to overwhelm a target with traffic, creating a distributed denial of service. When hundreds or thousands of machines send requests or data simultaneously, the target’s bandwidth, routers, and servers get saturated. This leaves legitimate users unable to access services or experience severe delays, because the network resources are consumed by the malicious flood. The strength of this attack lies in its distributed nature—traffic appears to come from many different sources, making it harder to block with simple filters and effectively shutting down or degrading the target's availability. Other ideas like improving throughput don’t fit the situation, since botnets degrade performance rather than enhance it. Logging keystrokes or encrypting all traffic describe different security threats (data theft or ransomware-related behavior) and aren’t the typical network disruption caused by a botnet’s primary operation.

Botnets affect a network mainly by coordinating many compromised devices to overwhelm a target with traffic, creating a distributed denial of service. When hundreds or thousands of machines send requests or data simultaneously, the target’s bandwidth, routers, and servers get saturated. This leaves legitimate users unable to access services or experience severe delays, because the network resources are consumed by the malicious flood. The strength of this attack lies in its distributed nature—traffic appears to come from many different sources, making it harder to block with simple filters and effectively shutting down or degrading the target's availability.

Other ideas like improving throughput don’t fit the situation, since botnets degrade performance rather than enhance it. Logging keystrokes or encrypting all traffic describe different security threats (data theft or ransomware-related behavior) and aren’t the typical network disruption caused by a botnet’s primary operation.