Botnet for academic purposes

I want to make a botnet, maybe with virtual machines or something. I've heard that some botnets are IRC-based. Any ideas about where to start for making a botnet? I am less concerned with the getting-people-to-install-shit angle, and more interested in the concepts of stealth, steganography, command & control, and distributed systems stuff.

>>17
Thanks for the info. Fascinating stuff.

a downloader which downloads and installs the client,

But then it'd have to download the payload from some central server, right? Again, there's the problem with stealth, since malware researchers would be able to identify the server it's coming from.

But maybe you'd just find old-ass WordPress sites with CVEs on Shodan or something and then use those to host it? Or something like that.

fileless execution of payloads

WMI hijacking?