Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

Buzzword: Botnet

Life is hard enough without having to decipher everything. Each week, Marketplace Money brings you a word or a phrase that has bubbled to the top of the news. For instance — "Botnet." You hear it, you see it, but do you really know it?

—————————

The rise of the machines brings us this week’s Marketplace Money buzzword: botnet.

A botnet isn’t an evil cyborg sent from the future, it’s a group of computers which hackers commandeer to send evil viruses and spam, often without the computer owners even knowing.

This week, the security company Postini, said 94 percent of all e-mail sent in December was spam. Botnets were the biggest culprits. They also pump out enough damaging viruses to infect 250,000 computers per day. Thanks to quicker Internet connections, experts say no matter how fast they terminate botnets, they’ll be back.

Related Topics

Tagged as:

Latest Episodes

View All Shows
  • Marketplace
    7 hours ago
    25:34
  • Make Me Smart
    12 hours ago
    15:36
  • Marketplace Morning Report
    14 hours ago
    6:39
  • Marketplace Tech
    19 hours ago
    7:09
  • Million Bazillion
    3 days ago
    28:24
  • How We Survive
    6 days ago
    25:04
  • This Is Uncomfortable
    7 days ago
    26:12
  • Financially Inclined
    3 months ago
    12:30
  • The Uncertain Hour
    4 months ago
    22:50
  • Corner Office from Marketplace
    5 years ago
    20:58