A Survey on Detection Methods Against Internet Worm Attacks

Abstract

Miscellaneous attacks against the Internet have become one of the major concerns among many imperfectionsin contemporary cyberspace. In particular, worms are one highly dangerous type. Howto timely detect and utterly stop such attacks still remains an unresolved issue, and it is of greatnecessity to review the existing quality work in the field of worm detection. In this paper, majorcharacteristics, working mechanisms, and the life cycle of worms are introduced. Then, we divideexisting worm detection techniques into two categories: machine learning methods and traditionaldetection 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 aresummarized. The goal of this paper is to let researchers comprehensively understand various existingdefense mechanisms against worms.