Proactive Threat Detection: A DNS based approach

The second publication for the TIDE project. It has received the Best Paper Award at NOMS 2018. Snowshoe spam is a type of spam which is notoriously hard to detect. Differently from regular spam, snowshoe spammers distribute the volume among many hosts, in order to make detection harder. To be successful, however spammers need to appear as legitimate as possible, for example, by adopting email best practice like Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
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Looking beyond the horizon: Thoughts on Proactive Detection of Threats

The fourth publication for the TIDE project. The FIRST talk (see here) has been extended into a journal paper for Digital Threats: Research and Practice (DTRAP). In this paper we argue that we, as a security community, should move towards proactive security. However, we shed light on both sides of the coin. We think the ‘optimal’ way is to combine the reactive and proactive methods, to make use of the best of both worlds.
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Threat Identification Using Active DNS Measurements

The third publication for the TIDE project. Details more formally the research questions of this project. The DNS is a core service for the Internet. Most uses of the DNS are benign, but some are malicious. Attackers often use a DNS do- main to enable an attack (e.g. DDoS attacks). Detection of these attacks often happens passively, but this leads to a reactive detection of attacks. However, registering and configuring a domain takes time.
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Melting the Snow: Using Active DNS Measurements to Detect Snowshoe Spam Domains

The second publication for the TIDE project. It has received the Best Paper Award at NOMS 2018. Snowshoe spam is a type of spam which is notoriously hard to detect. Differently from regular spam, snowshoe spammers distribute the volume among many hosts, in order to make detection harder. To be successful, however spammers need to appear as legitimate as possible, for example, by adopting email best practice like Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
Read more →