A Survey on Detection Methods Against Internet Worm Attacks

Abstract

Miscellaneous attacks against the Internet have become one of the major concerns among many imperfections in contemporary cyberspace. In particular, worms are one highly dangerous type. How to timely detect and utterly stop such attacks still remains an unresolved issue, and it is of great necessity to review the existing quality work in the field of worm detection. In this paper, major characteristics, working mechanisms, and the life cycle of worms are introduced. Then, we divide existing worm detection techniques into two categories: machine learning methods and traditional detection methods, and existing worm countermeasures are reviewed in detail by category. Finally, some open issues in the field of worm detection are discussed, and the contents of this paper are summarized. The goal of this paper is to let researchers comprehensively understand various existing defense mechanisms against worms.

Keywords

• worm attacks
• intrusion detection
• cyber security