Botnets harvest a lot of data from their victims. Access to that data is increasingly lucrative and, if you package the data just right, can be sold on as a subscription feed to a growing pool of organizations. Security analyst community used to be quite open in the way they shared information about botnets. But now, those that have it are much less likely to “give back to the community” and provide it as a paid-for stream of data. Botnets have become a golden goose to those charged with gathering intelligence on the populations of foreign populations.”]
Source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/a-mercenary-approach-to-botnets