The Botnet Threat

Many in the security industry (including yours truly) estimate that over 1/3 of all home computers are infected with bots and are part of a botnet. This enables someone to remotely control and use that system for good or ill. If these estimates are correct, over 100 million computers in the U.S. are part of some botnet. Sometimes these bots are used for spam, DDoS attacks, password cracking, proxying attacks, etc.

In a world where cyber warfare is raging every day across the planet, how dangerous are these botnets? What if these bots were used to launch a cyber warfare attack?

Imagine a scenario where a belligerent nation took control of a few million of these bots and used them to launch an attack against the infrastructure of another nation. Imagine the damage could they do to the infrastructure including communications systems, the electrical grid, e-commerce, water and sewer systems, etc.

Should these computer owners be required to clean their systems for the public good?