Exploring a Service-Based Normal Behaviour Profiling System for Botnet Detection

Effective detection of botnet traffic becomes difficult as the attackers use encrypted payload and dynamically changing port numbers (protocols) to bypass signature based detection and deep packet inspection. In this paper, we build a normal profiling-based botnet detection system using three unsupervised learning algorithms on service-based flow-based data, including self-organizing map, local outlier, and k-NN outlier factors. Evaluations on publicly available botnet data sets show that the proposed system could reach up to 91% detection rate with a false alarm rate of 5%

Analysis of Network Traffic Flows for Centralized Botnet Detection

At present, the Internet users are facing the most serious threats considering the malwares have become a powerful tool for attackers. Botnets are one of the most significant malwares. A Bot is an intelligent program run by worms, Trojans or other malicious codes that could perform a group of cyber-attacks on the Internet. Botnets are used for attacks such as stealing data, spam, denial-of-service, phishing etc. A variety of methods and algorithms have been proposed to detect botnets, in which each of them has an emphasis on specific data or methods. Using Netflow data is an effective and agile method compared to other methods in detecting botnets. This research focuses on centralized and HTTP botnets. In the proposed method, we used the hierarchical clustering, XMeans clustering, and rule-based classification. The methods helped to achieve fast and accurate recognition. Hierarchical clustering improved the speed and accuracy rate in the process of separating the flows. The X-Means algorithm led to the highest cohesion inside the clusters and the maximum distance between clusters by choosing optimal K. Using rule-based classification, each cluster with the similar flow is placed in a bot cluster, a semi-bot cluster or a normal cluster. By performing network traffic flow analysis for the proposed method, sets of botnets have been evaluated and the results indicated that more than 95% accuracy in detection. By a minimum overhead, this approach can provide botnet detection with high accuracy and speed

Survey of Approaches and Features for the Identification of HTTP-Based Botnet Traffic

Botnet use is on the rise, with a growing number of botmasters now switching to the HTTP-based C&C infrastructure. This offers them more stealth by allowing them to blend in with benign web traffic. Several works have been carried out aimed at characterising or detecting HTTP-based bots, many of which use network communication features as identifiers of botnet behaviour. In this paper, we present a survey of these approaches and the network features they use in order to highlight how botnet traffic is currently differentiated from normal traffic. We classify papers by traffic types, and provide a breakdown of features by protocol. In doing so, we hope to highlight the relationships between features at the application, transport and network layers

HỆ THỐNG PHÁT HIỆN TẤN CÔNG BOTNET SỬ DỤNG WEB PROXY VÀ CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK

Botnets are increasingly becoming the most dangerous threats in the field of network security, and many different approaches to detecting attacks from botnets have been studied. Whatever approach is used, the evolution of the botnet\u27s nature and the set of defined rules for detecting botnets can affect the performance of botnet detection systems. In this paper, we propose a general family of architectures that uses a convolutional neural network group to transform the raw characteristics provided by network flow recording and analysis tools into higher-level features, then conducts a (binary) class to assess whether a flow corresponds to a botnet attack. We experimented on the CTU-13 dataset using different configurations of the convolutional neural network to evaluate the potential of deep learning on the botnet detection problem. In particular, we propose a botnet detection system that uses a web proxy. This technique can be helpful in implementing a low-cost, but highly effective botnet detection system.Botnet đang ngày càng trở thành những mối đe dọa nguy hiểm nhất trong lĩnh vực an ninh mạng, nhiều hướng tiếp cận khác nhau để phát hiện tấn công bằng botnet đã được nghiên cứu. Tuy nhiên, dù bất kì hướng tiếp cận nào được sử dụng, sự tiến hóa về bản chất của botnet cùng tập các quy luật được định nghĩa sẵn để phát hiện ra botnet có thể ảnh hưởng đến hiệu suất của hệ thống phát hiện botnet. Trong bài báo này, chúng tôi đề xuất một họ kiến trúc tổng quát sử dụng thuộc nhóm Convolutional Neural Network để biến đổi từ đặc trưng thô do các công cụ ghi nhận và phân tích network flow cung cấp thành đặc trưng cấp cao hơn, từ đó tiến hành phân lớp (nhị phân) để đánh giá một flow tương ứng với tình trạng bị botnet tấn công hay không. Chúng tôi thử nghiệm trên tập CTU-13 với các cấu hình khác nhau của convolutional neural network để đánh giá tiềm năng dùng deep learning với convolutional neural network vào bài toán phát hiện botnet. Đặc biệt là đề xuất hệ thống phát hiện Botnet sử dụng Web proxy. Đây là một kỹ thuật giúp triển khai hệ thống phát hiện botnet với chi phí thấp mang lại hiệu quả cao

An investigation to detect banking malware network communication traffic using machine learning techniques

Banking malware are malicious programs that attempt to steal confidential information, such as banking authentication credentials, from users. Zeus is one of the most widespread banking malware variants ever discovered. Since the Zeus source code was leaked, many other variants of Zeus have emerged, and tools such as anti-malware programs exist that can detect Zeus; however, these have limitations. Anti-malware programs need to be regularly updated to recognise Zeus, and the signatures or patterns can only be made available when the malware has been seen. This limits the capability of these anti-malware products because they are unable to detect unseen malware variants, and furthermore, malicious users are developing malware that seeks to evade signature-based anti-malware programs. In this paper, a methodology is proposed for detecting Zeus malware network traffic flows by using machine learning (ML) binary classification algorithms. This research explores and compares several ML algorithms to determine the algorithm best suited for this problem and then uses these algorithms to conduct further experiments to determine the minimum number of features that could be used for detecting the Zeus malware. This research also explores the suitability of these features when used to detect both older and newer versions of Zeus as well as when used to detect additional variants of the Zeus malware. This will help researchers understand which network flow features could be used for detecting Zeus and whether these features will work across multiple versions and variants of the Zeus malware

Multimodal Approach for Malware Detection

Although malware detection is a very active area of research, few works were focused on using physical properties (e.g., power consumption) and multimodal features for malware detection. We designed an experimental testbed that allowed us to run samples of malware and non-malicious software applications and to collect power consumption, network traffic, and system logs data, and subsequently to extract dynamic behavioral-based features. We also extracted code-based static features of both malware and non-malicious software applications. These features were used for malware detection based on: feature level fusion using power consumption and network traffic data, feature level fusion using network traffic data and system logs, and multimodal feature level and decision level fusion. The contributions when using feature level fusion of power consumption and network traffic data are: (1) We focused on detecting real malware using the extracted dynamic behavioral features (both power-based and network traffic-based) and supervised machine learning algorithms, which has not been done by any of the prior works. (2) We ran a large number of machine learning experiments, which allowed us to identify the best performing learner, DC voltage rails that led to the best malware detection performance, and the subset of features that are the best predictors for malware detection. (3) The comparison of malware detection performance was done using a comprehensive set of metrics that reflect different aspects of the quality of malware detection. In the case of the feature level fusion using network traffic data and system logs, the contributions are: (1) Most of the previous works that have used network flows-based features have done classification of the network traffic, while our focus was on classifying the software running in a machine as malware and non-malicious software using the extracted dynamic behavioral features. (2) We experimented with different sizes of the training set (i.e., 90%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of the data) and found that smaller training sets produced very good classification results. This aspect of our work has a practical value because the manual labeling of the training set is a tedious and time consuming process. In this dissertation we present a multimodal deep learning neural network that integrates different modalities (i.e., power consumption, system logs, network traffic, and code-based static data) using decision level fusion. We evaluated the performance of each modality individually, when using feature level fusion, and when using decision level fusion. The contributions of our multimodal approach are as follow: (1) Collecting data from different modalities allowed us to develop a multimodal approach to malware detection, which has not been widely explored by prior works. Even more, none of the previous works compared the performance of feature level fusion with decision level fusion, which is explored in this dissertation. (2) We proposed a multimodal decision level fusion malware detection approach using a deep neural network and compared its performance with the performance of feature level fusion approaches based on deep neural network and standard supervised machine learning algorithms (i.e., Random Forest, J48, JRip, PART, Naive Bayes, and SMO)