Development of Research on Botnet Defenses, From the Viewpoint of Botnet Lifecycle

Botnets have become one of the most serious threats to Internet security. In the paper we firstly expound our understanding of botnets briefly, including their definition, attributions, topologies and especially lifecycle in which we distinguish the propagation and injection, the command and control, and the attack phases. Then we discuss the techniques of botnet defense according to each phase of the botnet's lifecycle in detail. The goal of the paper is to give the defenders a comprehensive view of the understanding to botnets. We hope that it will advance the research on botnet defenses more in subsequent research.