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Chapter 1
Introduction to Bots
In the beginning, bots, short for “robots,” were neutral entities and nonmalicious.
Windows Internet worms entered the wild in the late 1990s, leading to the automa-
tion of malicious code. Bots emerged from this landscape. e term “botnets” itself
actually appears to have been coined from “robot networks.” e word “robot” has
a Czech derivation from the word “robotovat,” which means “to work.”* is is also
v
ery similar to the Russian word “rabotat,” which has the same meaning. When
formed into groupings of bots, or botnets (networks or groupings of bot-infected
computers), the aggregate resources are quite powerf ...