A comparative study of traditional botnets versus super-botnets

Malicious botnets have been around for years. Although the information security community has developed many countermeasures for combating botnets, the recent trend of smaller botnets and the rise of super-botnets (i.e., networks of independent botnets) that are more sophisticated and highly resistant to the current countermeasures pose a serious threat to the entire industry. We have conducted a simulation study to compare major defense strategies against traditional botnets and super-botnets. Our goal was to better understand the current challenge the community is facing and to evaluate the effectiveness of the different super-botnet countermeasures. Our results show that centralized defense measures are more effective against super-botnets.