S-URL Flux: A Novel C&C Protocol for Mobile Botnets

Abstract

The rapid development of 3G/WiFi network and Smartphone has greatly stimulated the evolution of mobile botnets. Mobile botnets have attracted extensive attentions from the academic community. In this paper, we introduce our design of an advanced mobile botnet called SUbot which exploits a novel command and control (C&C) strategy named Shorten-URL Flux (short for S-URL Flux). The proposed SUbot would have desirable features including being stealthy, resilient and low-cost (i.e., low battery power consumption, low traffic consumption and low money cost).This paper focuses on the design principle of the mobile botnet. In comparison to traditional mobile botnet, SUbot has stronger adaptability and stability. It's of great significance to research and defend against such kind of advance mobile botnet. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.