A Survey of Botnet and Botnet Detection

Abstract

Among the various forms of malware, botnets are emerging as the most serious threat against cyber-security as they provide a distributed platform for several illegal activities such as launching distributed denial of service attacks against critical targets, malware dissemination, phishing, and click fraud. The defining characteristic of botnets is the use of command and control channels through which they can be updated and directed. Recently, botnet detection has been an interesting research topic related to cyber-threat and cyber-crime prevention. This paper is a survey of botnet and botnet detection. The survey clarifies botnet phenomenon and discusses botnet detection techniques. This survey classifies botnet detection techniques into four classes: signature-based, anomaly-based, DNS-based, and mining-base. It summarizes botnet detection techniques in each class and provides a brief comparison of botnet detection techniques.