peer-to-peer botnet (P2P botnet)

A peer-to-peer botnet is a decentralized group of malware-compromised machines working together for an attacker’s purpose without their owners’ knowledge.  

Just as in the traditional botnet, which includes a command-and-control server, the bots are typically infected with a Trojan horse and are often used for sending spam or performing DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets have a random organization and operate without a C&C server. Bot software maintains a list of trusted computers (including other infected machines), information drop locations and locations where the machines can update their malware. More advanced botnets use encryption in order to hide communications between bots.

The purpose of decentralization is to help evade detection and also make it harder for security researchers to access communications than is the case with a conventional botnet topology. The lack of a command-and-control server makes it less likely that detection of a single bot can lead to investigators taking down the entire network.