Title
C&C tracer: Botnet command and control behavior tracing
Abstract
The Botnet command and control (C&C) behavior becomes more and more dynamic and rapid so that information security analyst is difficult to capture the Botnet behavior in real time. In this work, we proposed a Botnet C&C behavior tracing system (naming C&C Tracer) for capturing the Botnet C&C behavior. The C&C Tracer consists of three components, such as: C&C active behavior feature extracting (CAFE), domain name status querying (DNSQ) and C&C status tracing analyzer (CSTA). In CAFE, different sources of Botnet URLs with diverse representing formats could be parsed for behavior feature generation. According to the parsed URLs, DNSQ can automatic query the C&C domains to the online domain name resolution repository and extract the domain name resolution result. Finally, CSTA considers different observed C&C live and active ability and schedules the tracing strategies. The proposed system not only can incorporate different public blacklist of Botnet C&C, but also dynamically tracing the Botnet C&C behavior for expanding the blacklist in time. This system is fully implemented and operating in real network environment since 2009. The C&C Tracer can reduce the non-active C&C domain name close to 80% with only 0.69% false postive rate. We demonstrate the real cases that identify the Botnet C&C servers by C&C tracer for showing the effectiveness of proposed system.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1109/ICSMC.2011.6083942
SMC
Keywords
Field
DocType
c&c active behavior feature extraction,command and control,feature generation,network security,botnet command and control,informationsecurityanalyst,behavior tracing,c&c status tracing analyzer,computer network security,botnet,domain name status querying,domain name,feature extraction,databases,labeling,servers,data mining,real time systems
Data mining,Computer science,Botnet,Command and control,Blacklist,Server,Artificial intelligence,Tracing,Network security,Feature extraction,Parsing,Machine learning,Database
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1062-922X
978-1-4577-0652-3
5
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.60
4
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Meng-Han Tsai1102.10
Kai-Chi Chang2162.94
Chang-Cheng Lin350.60
Ching-Hao Mao426817.32
Huey-Ming Lee524749.38