Title
Autonomously detecting sensors in fully distributed botnets.
Abstract
Botnet attacks have devastating effects on public and private infrastructures. The botmasters controlling these networks aim to prevent takedown attempts by using highly resilient P2P overlays to commandeer their botnets, and even harden them with countermeasures against intelligence gathering attempts. In fact, recent research indicates that advanced countermeasures can hamper the ability to gather the necessary intelligence for taking down botnets. In this article, we take the perspective of the botmaster to eventually anticipate their behavior. That said, we present a novel mechanism, namely Trust Based Botnet Monitoring Countermeasure (TrustBotMC), that combines computational trust with specially crafted bot messages to detect the presence of monitoring activity. We study and evaluate different computational trust models, to create a local and autonomous mechanism that ensures the avoidance of common botnet tracking mechanisms, such as sensors. Furthermore, we show, via our experimental results, that our approach can reduce the gathered intelligence by at least 53% compared to techniques that have been seen in botnets to date. Finally, we investigate techniques for mitigating our approach.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1016/j.cose.2019.01.004
Computers & Security
Keywords
Field
DocType
Sensor evasion,Botnet monitoring,Fully distributed botnets,P2P botnets,Computational trust
Countermeasure,Botnet,Computer science,Computer security,Computational trust,Overlay
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
83
0167-4048
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
14
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Leon Bock162.86
Emmanouil Vasilomanolakis210915.20
Jan Wolf3113.35
Max Mühlhäuser41652252.87