If your computer or network gets infected by one of the malware that makes your computer a part of a large botnet then your computer is always connecting to the remote command and control (C&C) center servers. The malicious people sitting on the other end can control your computer and make it do anything. They can even use your computer for potential criminal activities.
The security researchers all over the world keep discovering these botnets and their C&C servers regularly. They also publish the IP addresses of these C&C servers publicly so that network admins can protect their systems from such IP addresses.
With the help of a free tool called HS IP Blacklist Check, we can do two things – we can find if our computer has been connecting to known and active C&C server IP addresses, and we can block the known malicious IP addresses in the Windows Firewall.
Since HS IP Blacklist Check downloads the most recent updated list of botnet C&C IP addresses from Abuse.ch, it does not work when you are offline. After launching this tool, you can click on the Check button and it will show you any blacklisted IP if found.
We can switch to the Blocklist tab to see the complete list of IP addresses that should be blocked on your Windows PC. This list comes from Abuse.ch website and contains some of the most malicious botnet C&C servers. We can click on the Block All button to automatically add rules in the Windows Firewall to block them all.
HS IP Blacklist Check can be used as a preventive measure to avoid any malicious IP addresses from being connecting to our systems. But for the complete protection we recommend using a security product like ESET Internet Security.
You can download HS IP Blacklist Check from https://www.henrys-software.com/software.php?id=11.