An Internet-worm early warning system

Abstract

We propose an Internet-worm early warning system, which integrates a set of novel techniques that automatically detect the concerted scan activity of an on-going worm attack. It is able to issue warning at the early stage of worm propagation and to provide necessary information for security analysts to control the damage. The system monitors a "used" address space. Unlike the traditional approach that keeps track of SYN packets, it relies on RESET packets to find the scan sources, which has greater accuracy and less overhead. The system is resilient to anti-monitor measures. Particularly, a sophisticated protocol is designed to distinguish faked scan sources from real scan sources. We provide an analytical study on the properties and effectiveness of this early warning system, and back up our claims by numerical results.