Detection Method of DNS-based Botnet Communication Using Obtained NS Record History

Abstract

To combat with botnet, early detection of the botnet communication and fast identification of the bot-infected PCs is very important for network administrators. However, in DNS protocol, which appears to have been used for botnet communication recently, it is difficult to differentiate the ordinary domain name resolution and suspicious communication.Our key idea is that the most of domain name resolutions first obtain the corresponding NS (Name Server) record from authoritative name servers in the Internet, whereas suspicious communication may omit the procedures to hide their malicious activities. Based on this observation, we propose a detection method of DNS basis botnet communication using obtained NS record history. Our proposed method checks whether the destined name server (IP address) of a DNS query is included in the obtained NS record history to detect the botnet communications.