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No, it's not, and it's a pretty useless idea. An expensive, slow, and extremely CPU and network intensive protocol is not what you want to use for stealthy mal

by cplease 12y ago

No, it's not, and it's a pretty useless idea. An expensive, slow, and extremely CPU and network intensive protocol is not what you want to use for stealthy malware communications. It could be done; you could also hammer a nail with a trout, but you'd look pretty foolish in the process.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
On what basis are you saying this paper "isn't published"? Just curious.
- DangerousPie 12y ago
  "Published" papers are papers published in a scientific journal after peer review. This just appears to be an un-reviewed article.
  - needmoney90 12y ago
    It is not. I wrote this for a computer security class, and the paper itself was (unfortunately) last minute. I posted it to reddit last night as an afterthought, found it here in the morning. I'm sorry if it isn't up to any sort of standards, this draft was rushed, and I wasn't expecting it to get any sort of traction.
666_howitzer 12y ago
Yes, I agree with you on the part that it is not the most efficient network protocol, but you're overlooking the fact that blockchain is almost impossible to take down and is censorship-free. Even if they manage to locate the C&C; they simply couldn't shut it down, since BC is decentralised and a distributed database.
- csandreasen 12y ago
  There's also the disadvantage of having every communication between the malware and the controller publicly logged, and the fact that that every command issued would have a small transaction free.
3pt14159 12y ago
This would be the fallback com-channel, not the primary. If an ip or board gets taken down, no problem.
alecco 12y ago
Yes. But many botnets nowadays do bitcoin mining, the overhead in those cases might be small.
Buge 12y ago
It's not expensive because you only need to post a message when you are changing IPs, and it will only cost a fraction of a cent. If botnets used to work with hardcoded IP addresses, it's clear that changing IP addresses does not happen very often, and usually triggered by a government action which is very expensive for the government. It does not need to be CPU or network intensive because it can basically use a light wallet implementation.

by cplease 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

On what basis are you saying this paper "isn't published"? Just curious.

DangerousPie 12y ago
"Published" papers are papers published in a scientific journal after peer review. This just appears to be an un-reviewed article.
- needmoney90 12y ago
  It is not. I wrote this for a computer security class, and the paper itself was (unfortunately) last minute. I posted it to reddit last night as an afterthought, found it here in the morning. I'm sorry if it isn't up to any sort of standards, this draft was rushed, and I wasn't expecting it to get any sort of traction.

666_howitzer 12y ago

Yes, I agree with you on the part that it is not the most efficient network protocol, but you're overlooking the fact that blockchain is almost impossible to take down and is censorship-free. Even if they manage to locate the C&C; they simply couldn't shut it down, since BC is decentralised and a distributed database.

csandreasen 12y ago
There's also the disadvantage of having every communication between the malware and the controller publicly logged, and the fact that that every command issued would have a small transaction free.

3pt14159 12y ago

This would be the fallback com-channel, not the primary. If an ip or board gets taken down, no problem.

alecco 12y ago

Yes. But many botnets nowadays do bitcoin mining, the overhead in those cases might be small.

Buge 12y ago

It's not expensive because you only need to post a message when you are changing IPs, and it will only cost a fraction of a cent. If botnets used to work with hardcoded IP addresses, it's clear that changing IP addresses does not happen very often, and usually triggered by a government action which is very expensive for the government. It does not need to be CPU or network intensive because it can basically use a light wallet implementation.