A Novel Approach for Modeling and Detection of Camouflaging Worm

Network Security

The C-Worm is different from traditional worms because of its ability to intelligently manipulate its scan traffic volume over time. Thereby, the C-Worm camouflages its propagation from existing worm detection systems based on analyzing the propagation traffic generated by worms. We analyze characteristics of the C-Worm and conduct a comprehensive comparison between its traffic and non-worm traffic (background traffic). We observe that these two types of traffic are barely distinguishable in the time domain. However, their distinction is clear in the frequency domain, due to the recurring manipulative nature of the C-Worm. Motivated by our observations, we design a novel spectrum-based scheme to detect the C-Worm. Our scheme uses the Power Spectral Density (PSD) distribution of the scan traffic volume and its corresponding Spectral Flatness Measure (SFM) to distinguish the C-Worm traffic from background traffic. Using a comprehensive set of detection metrics and real-world traces as background traffic, we conduct extensive performance evaluations on our proposed spectrum-based detection scheme.

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