• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.127-134
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• 2022

Steganography is a hidden technique in which secret messages are hidden in various multimedia files, and it is widely exploited for cyber crime and attacks because it is very difficult for third parties other than senders and receivers to identify the presence of hidden information in communication messages. Botnet typically consists of botmasters, bots, and C&C (Command & Control) servers, and is a botmasters-controlled network with various structures such as centralized, distributed (P2P), and hybrid. Recently, in order to enhance the concealment of botnets, research on Stego Botnet, which uses SNS platforms instead of C&C servers and performs C&C communication by applying steganography techniques, has been actively conducted, but image or video media-oriented stego botnet techniques have been studied. On the other hand, audio files such as various sound sources and recording files are also actively shared on SNS, so research on stego botnet based on audio steganography is needed. Therefore, in this study, we present the results of comparative analysis on hidden capacity by file type and tool through experiments, using a stego botnet that performs C&C hidden communication using audio files as a cover medium in Telegram Messenger.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.807-816
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• 2015

During the last decade most of coordinated security breaches are performed by the means of botnets, which is a large overlay network of compromised computers being controlled by remote botmaster. Due to high volumes of traffic to be analyzed, the challenge is posed by managing tradeoff between system scalability and accuracy. We propose a novel Hadoop-based P2P botnet detection method solving the problem of scalability and having high accuracy. Moreover, our approach is characterized not to require labeled data and applicable to encrypted traffic as well.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.2591-2611
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• 2020

Botnets have become one of the most significant threats to Internet-connected smartphones. A botnet is a combination of infected devices communicating through a command server under the control of botmaster for malicious purposes. Nowadays, the number and variety of botnets attacks have increased drastically, especially on the Android platform. Severe network disruptions through massive coordinated attacks result in large financial and ethical losses. The increase in the number of botnet attacks brings the challenges for detection of harmful software. This study proposes a smart framework for mobile botnet detection using static analysis. This technique combines permissions, activities, broadcast receivers, background services, API and uses the machine-learning algorithm to detect mobile botnets applications. The prototype was implemented and used to validate the performance, accuracy, and scalability of the proposed framework by evaluating 3000 android applications. The obtained results show the proposed framework obtained 98.20% accuracy with a low 0.1140 false-positive rate.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.231-236
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• 2018

Recently, a wide variety of IoT environment is being created due to the rapid development of information and communication technology. And accordingly in a variety of network structures, a countless number of attack techniques and new types of vulnerabilities are producing a social disturbance. In May of 2018, Talos Intelligence, the Cisco threat intelligence team has newly discovered 'VPN-Filter', which constitutes a large-scale IoT-based botnet, is infecting consumer routers in over 54 countries around the world. In this paper, types of IoT-based botnets and the attack techniques utilizing botnet will be examined and the countermeasure technique through EXIF metadata removal method which is the cause of connection method of C & C Server will be proposed by examining the characteristics of attack vulnerabilities and attack scenarios of VPN-Filter.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.101-115
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• 2011

A botnet is a huge network of hacked zombie PCs. Recognizing the fact that the majority of email spam is sent out by botnets, a system that is capable of detecting botnets and zombie PCS will be designed in this study by analyzing email spam. In this study, spam data collected in "an email spam trail system", Korea's national spam collection system, were used for analysis. In this study, we classified the spam groups by the URLs or attached files, and we measured how much the group has the characteristics of botnet and how much the IPs have the characteristics of zombie PC. Through the simulation result in this study, we could extract 16,030 zombie suspected PCs for one hours and it was verified that email spam can provide considerably useful information in tracing zombie PCs.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.1471-1492
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• 2015

The rapid development of smartphone technologies have resulted in the evolution of mobile botnets. The implications of botnets have inspired attention from the academia and the industry alike, which includes vendors, investors, hackers, and researcher community. Above all, the capability of botnets is uncovered through a wide range of malicious activities, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS), theft of business information, remote access, online or click fraud, phishing, malware distribution, spam emails, and building mobile devices for the illegitimate exchange of information and materials. In this study, we investigate mobile botnet attacks by exploring attack vectors and subsequently present a well-defined thematic taxonomy. By identifying the significant parameters from the taxonomy, we compared the effects of existing mobile botnets on commercial platforms as well as open source mobile operating system platforms. The parameters for review include mobile botnet architecture, platform, target audience, vulnerabilities or loopholes, operational impact, and detection approaches. In relation to our findings, research challenges are then presented in this domain.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.18 no.6A
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• pp.107-114
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• 2008

The Bot is a kind of worm/virus that can be used to launch the distributed denial-of-service(DDoS) attacks or send massive amount of spam e-mails, etc. A lot of organizations make an effort to counter the Botnet's attacks. In Korea, we use DNS sinkhole system to protect from the Botnet's attack, while in Japan "so called" CCC(Cyber Clean Center) has been developed to protect from the Botnet's attacks. But in case of DNS sinkhole system, there is a problem since it cannot cure the Bot infected PCs themselves and in case of CCC there is a problem since only 30% of users with the Botnet-infected PCs can cooperate to cure themself. In this paper we propose a new method that prevent the Botnet's attacks and cure the Bot-infected PCs at the same time.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.51-61
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• 2009

Recently, the cyber-attacks using botnets are being increased, Because these attacks pursue the money, the criminal aspect is also being increased, There are spreading of spam mail, DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, propagations of malicious codes and malwares, phishings. leaks of sensitive informations as cyber-attacks that used botnets. There are many studies about detection and mitigation techniques against centralized botnets, namely IRC and HITP botnets. However, P2P botnets are still in an early stage of their studies. In this paper, we analyzed the traffics of the Peacomm bot that is one of P2P-based storm bot by using honeynet which is utilized in active analysis of network attacks. As a result, we could see that the Peacomm bot sends a large number of UDP packets to the zombies in wide network through P2P. Furthermore, we could know that the Peacomm bot makes the scale of botnet maintained and extended through these results. We expect that these results are used as a basis of detection and mitigation techniques against P2P botnets.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.103-110
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• 2022

Botnets have been exploited for a variety of purposes, ranging from monetary demands to national threats, and are one of the most threatening types of attacks in the field of cybersecurity. Botnets emerged as a centralized structure in the early days and then evolved to a P2P structure. Bitcoin is the first online cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology announced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and is the most widely used cryptocurrency in the world. As the number of Bitcoin users increases, the size of Bitcoin network is also expanding. As a result, a botnet using the Bitcoin network as a C&C channel has emerged, and related research has been recently reported. In this study, we propose an encrypted botnet C&C communication mechanism and technique in the Bitcoin network and validate the proposed method by conducting performance evaluation through various experiments after building it on the Bitcoin testnet. By this research, we want to inform the possibility of botnet threats in the Bitcoin network to researchers.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.678-688
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• 2013

Different Different from a single attack, in DDoS Attacks, the botnets that are distributed on network initiate attacks against the target server simultaneously. In such cases, it is difficult to take an action while denying the access of packets that are regarded as DDoS since normal user's convenience should also be considered at the target server. Taking these considerations into account, the DDoS botnet detection system that can reduce the strain on the target server by detecting DDoS attacks on each user network basis, and then lets the network administrator to take actions that reduce overall scale of botnets, has been implemented in this study. The DDoS botnet detection system proposed by this study implemented the program which detects attacks based on the database composed of faults and abnormalities collected through analyzation of hourly attack traffics. The presence of attack was then determined using the threshold of current traffic calculated with the standard deviation and the mean number of packets. By converting botnet-based detection method centering around the servers that become the targets of attacks to the network based detection, it was possible to contemplate aggressive defense concept against DDoS attacks. With such measure, the network administrator can cut large scale traffics of which could be referred as the differences between DDoS and DoS attacks, in advance mitigating the scale of botnets. Furthermore, we expect to have an effect that can considerably reduce the strain imposed on the target servers and the network loads of routers in WAN communications if the traffic attacks can be blocked beforehand in the network communications under the router equipment level.