A Distributed Stealthy Coordination Mechanism for Worm Synchronization

Abstract

Once a critical mass of nodes is infected by a worm it becomes very difficult to stop the worm from infecting a large fraction of vulnerable nodes. Therefore, the focus of strategies for worm defense has been to detect the worm before it reaches that critical mass. In this paper we present a novel distributed coordination technique for worm propagation and synchronization that can persist under the radar of detection mechanisms long enough to achieve critical mass for a full fledged attack. We discuss the stealthy worm propagation and synchronization approach exploiting a P2P file-sharing network