DUSTBot: A duplex and stealthy P2P-based botnet in the Bitcoin network

As the root cause of illegal cyber activities, botnets are evolving continuously over the last two decades. Current researches on botnet command and control mechanism based on blockchain network suffer from high economic cost, single point of failure, and limited scalability. In this paper, we present DUSTBot, a novel P2P botnet model based on Bitcoin transactions to prepare for new cyber threats. Specifically, a covert, duplex, and low-cost command and control (C&C) channel in the Bitcoin network is presented in our work. DUSTBot uses the Bitcoin main network as the downstream channel while using the Bitcoin testnet as the upstream channel. Furthermore, the peer list exchange algorithm based on the Ethereum block hash proposed in this paper is effective against routing table poisoning attack and P2P botnet crawling. The robustness of DUSTBot against node removal is studied through constructing the botnet with a P2P simulator. We deploy the implementation of DUSTBot on cloud platforms to test its feasibility and performance. Moreover, the stealthiness of DUSTBot and the effectiveness of the proposed peer list exchange algorithm are evaluated. The results demonstrate the feasibility, performance, stealthiness, and robustness of DUSTBot. In the end, possible countermeasures are discussed to mitigate similar threats in the future.