Malware analysis from DDoS agents to bots and more

Sven Dietrich
Carnegie Mellon University / Software Engineering Institute

Thursday, March 8, 11:00AM
Babbio Center, Room 202
Stevens Institute of Technology
 

Abstract


Distributed intruder attack tools (from the early distributed denial of service handler/agent programs, to IRC based bots) have suffered from a major weakness that resulted in their takeover or takedown. That weakness was a detectable command and control channel that exposed the entire network and/or the attackers own commands. We discuss the communication techniques of DDoS malware evolving from simple to sophisticated since the first major attacks in 1999, outline the challenges for network defenders, and describe some of the analysis techniques (and systems) used for discovery of the malware mission and capabilities.