Abstract
Botnets are the preeminent source of online crime and probably the greatest threat to the Internet infrastructure. BotChain is presented in this paper: it is a botnent command-and-control(C&C) mechanism that runs on the BitCoin network. This kind of botnet is based on Bitcoin protocol and offers many advantages over/in comparison with existing C&C techniques. Actually Bitcoin is designed to resist the processes which are currently used to combat botnets.
The team:
Team Leader: Ing. Antonio Pirozzi
Supervisor: Prof. C. Aaron Visaggio
Antonio Pagliaro Luca Miranda Giuseppe Ristaino Gianluca Giso
Our botnet uses bitcoin protocol so it is necessary that C&C sends commands to bots through the bitcoin network. The communication between C&C and the bots is done through the transactions exchanges, in which the commands and their responses are hidden. All transactions are stored in Blockchain where the various Bot shall intercept transactions addressed to them and find any hidden commands within them. Since the Bot Master does not know in advance the address of the various Bot, a server shall keep track of the various addresses in a given file. As soon as they infect a new machine, bots will let know their bitcoin address to the server. The C&C consists of an Android application providing all the functionality required to access and work with the Bitcoin network.
