How to identify botnets and abusive IPs  turns into a battleground, cybersecurity professionals need to know how to identify botnets and abusive IPs. An abusive IP address is more than a combination of numbers; it’s a gateway for cyber havoc.

Botnets are a threat that’s always in the media spotlight as it cripples business operations and services. Its persistence and sheer number of compromised devices makes it a nightmare for businesses to fight off. Just when law enforcement and security professionals manage to shut down a botnet, a new one emerges with different names that employs new attack vectors and uses even more devices.

How to Identify Botnets and Abusive IPs: A Practical Guide

These “zombie armies” exploit Internet of Things (IoT) devices that have been infected with malware to generate excessive amounts of traffic aimed at target sites and servers. One example was the Mirai botnet attack of 2016 that took down dozens of popular online services including Netflix, Twitter, and Amazon.

Detecting botnets is difficult due to the large volume of network traffic they produce and their obfuscation tactics. The best strategy is to use active anomaly-based detection whereby an active probing technique seeks out a cause-effect correlation in real time.

Once an abusive IP is pinned, it’s time to send out the Bat-Signal and notify the ISP responsible. This lets them swoop in and investigate the situation, hopefully putting an end to it once and for all. As for the rest of your devices, it’s time to change those passwords and do a little spring cleaning to ensure no unwelcome visitors remain in the digital lair.