A Survey on Botnets: Incentives, Evolution, Detection and Current Trends

Botnets, groups of malware-infected hosts controlled by malicious actors, have gained prominence in an era of pervasive computing and the Internet of Things. Botnets have shown a capacity to perform substantial damage through distributed denial-of-service attacks, information theft, spam and malware...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Simon Nam Thanh Vu, Mads Stege, Peter Issam El-Habr, Jesper Bang, Nicola Dragoni
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
Series:Future Internet
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/13/8/198
Description
Summary:Botnets, groups of malware-infected hosts controlled by malicious actors, have gained prominence in an era of pervasive computing and the Internet of Things. Botnets have shown a capacity to perform substantial damage through distributed denial-of-service attacks, information theft, spam and malware propagation. In this paper, a systematic literature review on botnets is presented to the reader in order to obtain an understanding of the incentives, evolution, detection, mitigation and current trends within the field of botnet research in pervasive computing. The literature review focuses particularly on the topic of botnet detection and the proposed solutions to mitigate the threat of botnets in system security. Botnet detection and mitigation mechanisms are categorised and briefly described to allow for an easy overview of the many proposed solutions. The paper also summarises the findings to identify current challenges and trends within research to help identify improvements for further botnet mitigation research.
ISSN:1999-5903