A new botnet called HTTPBot is raising alarms across the cybersecurity community, with researchers warning that it’s delivering highly targeted DDoS attacks against key industries in China. According to a recent report by NSFOCUS, the HTTPBot botnet has been escalating its operations since it was first spotted in August 2024, aiming its sights on gaming platforms, tech companies, universities, and even tourism sites.
Unlike typical DDoS botnets that rely on brute-force traffic surges, HTTPBot uses what researchers are calling “scalpel-like” precision to choke off high-value business systems. These include online game login portals, payment interfaces, and real-time interactive services—platforms that can’t afford even momentary downtime.
Advanced DDoS Evasion on Windows Systems
What makes HTTPBot particularly concerning is its unusual design. While many botnet families tend to target Linux or IoT devices, HTTPBot is built in Golang and engineered specifically for Windows environments. It uses stealthy techniques to evade detection—hiding its graphical interface, modifying the Windows Registry for persistence, and launching on system startup without user awareness.
Once active, the botnet connects to a command-and-control (C2) server and waits for instructions. Since April 2025, it has issued over 200 attack commands, each carefully aimed at selected sectors. Instead of flooding targets with raw traffic, HTTPBot mimics real browser behavior, using protocol simulation to slip past traditional rule-based detection systems.
The malware supports multiple attack modules designed to exploit different aspects of web server behavior:
- BrowserAttack: Launches hidden Google Chrome sessions to mimic real users while draining resources.
- HttpAutoAttack: Uses cookies to simulate legitimate user sessions, bypassing basic traffic filters.
- HttpFpDlAttack: Leverages HTTP/2 to force servers into delivering large responses, increasing CPU load.
- WebSocketAttack: Initiates connections using
ws://andwss://protocols to tie up server resources. - PostAttack: Uses HTTP POST requests to stress endpoints reliant on form submissions or APIs.
- CookieAttack: Enhances the BrowserAttack method by adding complex cookie-handling mechanisms.
NSFOCUS researchers describe HTTPBot as a major evolution in DDoS tactics—one that avoids detection by acting less like malware and more like a swarm of legitimate users. “It bypasses defenses that rely on protocol integrity and session verification,” the team noted, “and it doesn’t depend on sheer volume but on maintaining persistent, session-based server strain.”
A DDoS Shift Toward Surgical Strikes
The HTTPBot botnet reflects a broader shift in DDoS strategy. Where older campaigns focused on overwhelming bandwidth with indiscriminate traffic floods, HTTPBot takes a targeted, infrastructure-level approach. This is especially damaging for industries like gaming, where real-time server interaction is essential.
By continuously rotating URL paths and regenerating session cookies, the malware keeps sessions alive and active, occupying server bandwidth and memory until systems buckle under the load. Its behavior mimics authentic traffic patterns so well that traditional web application firewalls (WAFs) and anomaly detectors often miss the threat entirely.
For defenders, this raises serious concerns. Windows-based enterprises must now consider a new class of botnet threats that can blend in with normal operations while methodically degrading performance.
