Effects of botnets – a human-organisational approach

Abstract

Botnets, the remotely controlled networks of computers with malicious aims, have significantly affected the international order from Ukraine to the United States in recent years. Disruptive software, such as malware, ransomware, and disruptive services, provided by those botnets has many specific effects and properties. Therefore, it is paramount to improve the defences against them. To tackle botnets more or less successfully, one should analyse their code, communication, kill chain, and similar technical properties. However, according to the Business Model for Information Security, besides technological attributes, there is also a human and organisational aspect to their capabilities and behaviour. This paper aims to identify the aspects of different attacks and present an analysis framework to identify botnets' technological and human attributes. After researching the literature and evaluating our previous findings in this research project, we formed a unified framework for the human-organisational classification of botnets. We tested the defined framework on five botnet attacks, presenting them as case studies. The chosen botnets were ElectrumDoSMiner, Emotet, Gamover Zeus, Mirai, and VPNFilter. The focus of the comparison was motivation, the applied business model, willingness to cooperate, capabilities, and the attack source. For defending entities, reaching the target state of defending capabilities is impossible with a one-time development due to cyberspace's dynamic behaviour and botnets. Therefore, one has to develop cyberdefence and conduct threat intelligence on botnets using such methodology as that presented in this paper. This framework comprises people and technological attributes according to the BMIS model, providing the defender with a standard way of classification.

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“…A DDoS attack works by using all available network bandwidth or resources on a target network. Often this is done by using a botnet -entire networks of computers which are infected by malware and under control of a command and control (C&C) server, which is controlled by a botmaster [7]. Often, IoT devices are used for the botnet since they are hardly secured and available in abundance [31,32].…”

“…Several articles describe cases of coordination between phishing and DDoS. Phishing is sometimes used to increase a botnet, which could be used for DDoS [7]. There are two ways phishing leads to an increased botnet.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is mostly theoretical and does not focus on specific cybercrimes. Another part of research literature focuses on the cooperation of criminal actors from an economical [6,7] or criminological [8] perspective. However, in our view, collaboration and cooperation are different from coordination.…”

COORDINATE: A model to analyse the benefits and costs of coordinating cybercrime

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is mostly theoretical and does not focus on specific cybercrimes. Another part of research literature focuses on the cooperation of criminal actors from an economical [6,7] or criminological [8] perspective. However, in our view, collaboration and cooperation are different from coordination.…”