Darknet as a Source of Cyber Intelligence: Survey, Taxonomy, and Characterization

• Published in: IEEE Communications surveys and tutorials 2016-01, Vol.18 (2), p.1197-1227
• Main Authors: Fachkha, Claude, Debbabi, Mourad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amplification; Botnet; Communities; Computer crime; Computer information security; Computer worms; Cyber; Cyber Attacks; Darknet; Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS); Distributed Reflection Denial of Service (DRDoS); Intelligence; Internet; IP networks; Monitoring; Probing; Security; Sensors; Taxonomy; Threats; Worms
• ISSN: 1553-877X; 2373-745X
• DOI: 10.1109/COMST.2015.2497690

Today, the Internet security community largely emphasizes cyberspace monitoring for the purpose of generating cyber intelligence. In this paper, we present a survey on darknet. The latter is an effective approach to observe Internet activities and cyber attacks via passive monitoring. We primarily define and characterize darknet and indicate its alternative names. We further list other trap-based monitoring systems and compare them to darknet. Moreover, in order to provide realistic measures and analysis of darknet information, we report case studies, namely, Conficker worm in 2008 and 2009, Sality SIP scan botnet in 2011, and the largest amplification attack in 2014. Finally, we provide a taxonomy in relation to darknet technologies and identify research gaps that are related to three main darknet categories: deployment, traffic analysis, and visualization. Darknet projects are found to monitor various cyber threat activities and are distributed in one third of the global Internet. We further identify that Honeyd is probably the most practical tool to implement darknet sensors, and future deployment of darknet will include mobile-based VOIP technology. In addition, as far as darknet analysis is considered, computer worms and scanning activities are found to be the most common threats that can be investigated throughout darknet; Code Red and Slammer/Sapphire are the most analyzed worms. Furthermore, our study uncovers various lacks in darknet research. For instance, less than 1% of the contributions tackled distributed reflection denial of service (DRDoS) amplification investigations, and at most 2% of research works pinpointed spoofing activities. Last but not least, our survey identifies specific darknet areas, such as IPv6 darknet, event monitoring, and game engine visualization methods that require a significantly greater amount of attention from the research community.