Botnet lab creation with open source tools and usefulness of such a tool for researchers

Botnets are large scale networks, which can span across the internet and comprise of computers, which have been infected by malicious software and are centrally controlled from a remote location. Botnets pose a great security risk and their size has been rising drastically over the past few years. The use of botnets by the underground community as a medium for online crime, bundled with their use for profit has shined the spotlight on them. Numerous researchers have proposed and designed infrastructures and frameworks that identify newly formed botnets and their traffic patterns. In this research, the design of a unified modular open source laboratory is proposed, with the use of virtual machines and open source tools, which can be used in analyzing and dissecting newly found bots in the wild. Furthermore, the usefulness and flexibility of the open source laboratory is evaluated by infecting my test machines with the Zeus Bot