274 research outputs found

    Master of puppets: analyzing and attacking a botnet for fun and profit

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    A botnet is a network of compromised machines (bots), under the control of an attacker. Many of these machines are infected without their owners’ knowledge, and botnets are the driving force behind several misuses and criminal activities on the Internet (for example spam emails). Depending on its topology, a botnet can have zero or more command and control (C&C) servers, which are centralized machines controlled by the cybercriminal that issue commands and receive reports back from the co-opted bots. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the command and control infrastructure of one of the world’s largest proprietary spamming botnets between 2007 and 2012: Cutwail/Pushdo. We identify the key functionalities needed by a spamming botnet to operate effectively. We then develop a number of attacks against the command and control logic of Cutwail that target those functionalities, and make the spamming operations of the botnet less effective. This analysis was made possible by having access to the source code of the C&C software, as well as setting up our own Cutwail C&C server, and by implementing a clone of the Cutwail bot. With the help of this tool, we were able to enumerate the number of bots currently registered with the C&C server, impersonate an existing bot to report false information to the C&C server, and manipulate spamming statistics of an arbitrary bot stored in the C&C database. Furthermore, we were able to make the control server inaccessible by conducting a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Our results may be used by law enforcement and practitioners to develop better techniques to mitigate and cripple other botnets, since many of findings are generic and are due to the workflow of C&C communication in general.First author draf

    Master of Puppets: Analyzing And Attacking A Botnet For Fun And Profit

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    A botnet is a network of compromised machines (bots), under the control of an attacker. Many of these machines are infected without their owners' knowledge, and botnets are the driving force behind several misuses and criminal activities on the Internet (for example spam emails). Depending on its topology, a botnet can have zero or more command and control (C&C) servers, which are centralized machines controlled by the cybercriminal that issue commands and receive reports back from the co-opted bots. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the command and control infrastructure of one of the world's largest proprietary spamming botnets between 2007 and 2012: Cutwail/Pushdo. We identify the key functionalities needed by a spamming botnet to operate effectively. We then develop a number of attacks against the command and control logic of Cutwail that target those functionalities, and make the spamming operations of the botnet less effective. This analysis was made possible by having access to the source code of the C&C software, as well as setting up our own Cutwail C&C server, and by implementing a clone of the Cutwail bot. With the help of this tool, we were able to enumerate the number of bots currently registered with the C&C server, impersonate an existing bot to report false information to the C&C server, and manipulate spamming statistics of an arbitrary bot stored in the C&C database. Furthermore, we were able to make the control server inaccessible by conducting a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Our results may be used by law enforcement and practitioners to develop better techniques to mitigate and cripple other botnets, since many of findings are generic and are due to the workflow of C&C communication in general

    OnionBots: Subverting Privacy Infrastructure for Cyber Attacks

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    Over the last decade botnets survived by adopting a sequence of increasingly sophisticated strategies to evade detection and take overs, and to monetize their infrastructure. At the same time, the success of privacy infrastructures such as Tor opened the door to illegal activities, including botnets, ransomware, and a marketplace for drugs and contraband. We contend that the next waves of botnets will extensively subvert privacy infrastructure and cryptographic mechanisms. In this work we propose to preemptively investigate the design and mitigation of such botnets. We first, introduce OnionBots, what we believe will be the next generation of resilient, stealthy botnets. OnionBots use privacy infrastructures for cyber attacks by completely decoupling their operation from the infected host IP address and by carrying traffic that does not leak information about its source, destination, and nature. Such bots live symbiotically within the privacy infrastructures to evade detection, measurement, scale estimation, observation, and in general all IP-based current mitigation techniques. Furthermore, we show that with an adequate self-healing network maintenance scheme, that is simple to implement, OnionBots achieve a low diameter and a low degree and are robust to partitioning under node deletions. We developed a mitigation technique, called SOAP, that neutralizes the nodes of the basic OnionBots. We also outline and discuss a set of techniques that can enable subsequent waves of Super OnionBots. In light of the potential of such botnets, we believe that the research community should proactively develop detection and mitigation methods to thwart OnionBots, potentially making adjustments to privacy infrastructure.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

    Understanding the Botnet Phenomenon

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    Internet threats have increased manifold with the arrival of botnets. Many organizations worldwide and the social networks have been affected by botnets. Numerous researches have been carried to understand the concept of bots, C&C channels, botnet and botmasters. These botnets have been able to update itself regularly which makes them very difficult to be detected. The purpose of this paper is to understand the of behavior of botnets and its affect on the virtual world. The paper has also analyzed the types of botnets, lifecycle and elements of botnets

    Characterizing the IRC-based Botnet Phenomenon

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    Botnets, networks of compromised machines that can be remotely controlled by an attacker, are one of the most common attack platforms nowadays. They can, for example, be used to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal sensitive information, or send spam emails. A long-term measurement study of botnet activities is useful as a basis for further research on global botnet mitigation and disruption techniques. We have built a distributed and fully-automated botnet measurement system which allows us to collect data on the botnet activity we observe in China. Based on the analysis of tracking records of 3,290 IRC-based botnets during a period of almost twelve months, this paper presents several novel results of botnet activities which can only be measured via long-term measurements. These include. amongst others, botnet lifetime, botnet discovery trends and distributions, command and control channel distributions, botnet size and end-host distributions. Furthermore, our measurements confirm and extend several previous results from this area. Our results show that the botnet problem is of global scale, with a scattered distribution of the control infrastructure and also a scattered distribution of the victims. Furthermore, the control infrastructure itself is rather flexible, with an average lifetime of a Command \& Control server of about 54 days. These results can also leverage research in the area of botnet detection, mitigation, and disruption: only by understanding the problem in detail, we can develop efficient counter measures

    Network forensics: detection and mitigation of botnet malicious code via darknet

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    Computer malwares are major threats that always find a way to penetrate the network, posing threats to the confidentiality, integrity and the availability of data. Network-borne malwares penetrate networks by exploiting vulnerabilities in networks and systems. IT administrators in campus wide network continue to look for security control solutions to reduce exposure and magnitude of potential threats. However, with multi-user computers and distributed systems, the campus wide network often becomes a breeding ground for botnets

    Command & Control: Understanding, Denying and Detecting - A review of malware C2 techniques, detection and defences

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    In this survey, we first briefly review the current state of cyber attacks, highlighting significant recent changes in how and why such attacks are performed. We then investigate the mechanics of malware command and control (C2) establishment: we provide a comprehensive review of the techniques used by attackers to set up such a channel and to hide its presence from the attacked parties and the security tools they use. We then switch to the defensive side of the problem, and review approaches that have been proposed for the detection and disruption of C2 channels. We also map such techniques to widely-adopted security controls, emphasizing gaps or limitations (and success stories) in current best practices.Comment: Work commissioned by CPNI, available at c2report.org. 38 pages. Listing abstract compressed from version appearing in repor

    A survey on Malware, Botnets and their detection

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    The use of Internet and its related services is increasing day by day. Many million people everyday surf net and use it for various reasons. With so much use of internet, the threats related to security are the major concern of today. There are many security concerns or threats faced by the net surfers and that is because of malwares which have many forms such as viruses, worms, trojans horses, rootkits, botnets and various other forms of data attacks. Among all the threats mentioned above, botnet seems to be quite prevalent now days. It has already spread its roots in Wide Area Network (WAN) such as Internet and continuously spreading at very high pace. Botnet is a network of computers where the computers are infected by installing in them a harmful program. Each computer as a part of Botnet is called a bot or zombie. A Botnet is remotely controlled by a person who commands and controls the bots through a server called command and control sever(C). Such person who commands the bots is called a botmaster or bot herder. This paper is written to serve the objective to perform an extensive study of core problem that is the study and detection of Botnets.This paper focuses on the study of malwares where special emphasis is put on botnets and their detection

    Different Techniques to Detect Botnet

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    Botnets are now considered as one of the most serious security threats. In contrast to previous malware, botnets have the characteristics of command and control (C&C) channel. Botnets usually use existing common protocols, eg IRC, HTTP and in protocol conforming manners, this makes the detection of botnet C&C a difficult problem. In this paper we tend to proposed 3 techniques specifically signature based detection, firewall IP blocking and anomaly based detection so as to detect bot and provide secure network services to the users
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