An Advanced Hybrid Peer-to-Peer Botnet

A “botnet” consists of a network of compromised computers controlled by an attacker (“botmaster”). Recently, botnets have become the root cause of many Internet attacks. To be well prepared for future attacks, it is not enough to study how to detect and defend against the botnets that have appeared in the past. More importantly, we should study advanced botnet designs that could be developed by botmasters in the near future. In this paper, we present the design of an advanced hybrid peer-to-peer botnet. Compared with current botnets, the proposed botnet is harder to be shut down, monitored, and hijacked. It provides robust network connectivity, individualized encryption and control traffic dispersion, limited botnet exposure by each bot, and easy monitoring and recovery by its botmaster. In the end, we suggest and analyze several possible defenses against this advanced botnet.