How "McBots" Will Control the Internet
MocBot is one of the latest bots that turns your computer into a zombie -- populating the Internet with malicious code without your knowledge. (See LURHQ Threat Intelligence Group for a techy description of MocBot.) Bots can piggyback onto any Internet-based e-communication. It's so far more than email and instant messages.
VoIP is only the latest of Internet-based e-communication channels being added to corporate (e.g., Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007) and consumer (e.g., AIM Triton) messaging and collaborative applications.
The "next big things" are blogs, podcasts, vidcasts --- all media that that travel across the Internet (i.e., use Internet Protocol). This new media is referred to as participatory (i.e., anyone can contribute). In the marketing world, new media is exciting because it is viral (i.e., distribution spreads quickly).
A bot can be coded to do whatever the botmaster (the bot developer) wants. For example, a single email can be the vector for single bot that attacks one computer. The attacked, now bot-controlled, computer can compromise many computers. The malicious offshoot of new media will be its use as a vector for the "McBot" that infiltrates the Internet at a quantum speed compared to today's email- and IM-carried bots.
See also Botnets and Anti-Social Communities.