Abnormally Malicious Autonomous Systems and Their Internet Connectivity

While many attacks are distributed across botnets, investigators and network operators have recently identified malicious networks through high profile autonomous system (AS) depeerings and network shutdowns. In this paper, we explore whether some ASs indeed are safe havens for malicious activity. We look for ISPs and ASs that exhibit disproportionately high malicious behavior using 10 popular blacklists, plus local spam data, and extensive DNS resolutions based on the contents of the blacklists. We find that some ASs have over 80% of their routable IP address space blacklisted. Yet others account for large fractions of blacklisted IP addresses. Several ASs regularly peer with ASs associated with significant malicious activity. We also find that malicious ASs as a whole differ from benign ones in other properties not obviously related to their malicious activities, such as more frequent connectivity changes with their BGP peers. Overall, we conclude that examining malicious activity at AS granularity can unearth networks with lax security or those that harbor cybercrime.