Year | 2015 |
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Author | ST Ali, P McCorry, PHJ Lee, F Hao |
Publisher | Newcastle University |
Link | View Research Paper |
Categories |
Bitcoin / Cryptocurrencies |
Botnets are the preeminent source of online crime and arguably the greatest threat to the Internet infrastructure. In this paper, we present ZombieCoin, a botnet command-and-control (C&C) mechanism that runs on the Bitcoin network. ZombieCoin offers considerable advantages over existing C&C techniques, most notably the fact that Bitcoin is designed to resist the very regulatory processes currently used to combat botnets. We believe this is a desirable avenue botmasters may explore in the near future and our work is intended as a first step towards devising effective countermeasures.