Time Zone Correlation Analysis of Malware/Bot Downloads

Khamphao SISAAT  Hiroaki KIKUCHI  Shunji MATSUO  Masato TERADA  Masashi FUJIWARA  Surin KITTITORNKUN  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E96-B   No.7   pp.1753-1763
Publication Date: 2013/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E96.B.1753
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Internet Architectures, Protocols, and Management Methods that Enable Sustainable Development)
Category: 
Keyword: 
malware,  botnet,  bot download,  time zone correlation,  honeypot,  

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Summary: 
A botnet attacks any Victim Hosts via the multiple Command and Control (C&C) Servers, which are controlled by a botmaster. This makes it more difficult to detect the botnet attacks and harder to trace the source country of the botmaster due to the lack of the logged data about the attacks. To locate the C&C Servers during malware/bot downloading phase, we have analyzed the source IP addresses of downloads to more than 90 independent Honeypots in Japan in the CCC (Cyber Clean Center) dataset 2010 comprising over 1 million data records and almost 1 thousand malware names. Based on GeoIP services, a Time Zone Correlation model has been proposed to determine the correlation coefficient between bot downloads from Japan and other source countries. We found a strong correlation between active malware/bot downloads and time zone of the C&C Servers. As a result, our model confirms that malware/bot downloads are synchronized with time zone (country) of the corresponding C&C Servers so that the botmaster can be possibly traced.