A Periodicity-Agnostic Method for Detecting Parasitic Botnets in Distributed Hash Table-Based Peer-to-Peer Networks

Jan 1, 2021 · 1 min read
projects

An FRGS research grant to study and propose methods to detect parasitic botnets in DHT-based P2P networks.

National Grant (Project Leader). Parasitic botnets coexist with benign nodes and services in a Distributed Hash Table (DHT)-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network; recent years have observed the emergence of new parasitic botnets on the BitTorrent and IPFS networks. This project proposed a more effective method to detect such botnets within DHT-based P2P networks.

Project Duration: 07/09/2021-06/09/2024

Funding: RM 115,500.00, Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS)

Project Member:

  • Dr. Shankar Karuppayah (PI)
  • Assoc. Prof. Dr. Selvakumar Manickam
  • Prof. Dr. Max Mühlhäuser
Cyber Security
Shankar Karuppayah
Authors
Shankar Karuppayah
Associate Professor

Shankar Karuppayah is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Cybersecurity Research Centre (CYRES), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which he joined as Senior Lecturer in 2016. He is also the Founder & CEO of BitRanger Sdn. Bhd., a USM cybersecurity spin-off established in October 2023 that translates research and innovation from USM/CYRES into operational cybersecurity capabilities, including OwlSight, an outsourced Security Operations Centre platform.

He obtained his B.Sc (HONS) Computer Science from Universiti Sains Malaysia in 2009 and his M.Sc. Software Systems Engineering from King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) in 2011. In 2016, Shankar obtained his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from TU Darmstadt, where his research on advanced techniques for monitoring peer-to-peer botnets later formed the basis of his Springer book, Advanced Monitoring in P2P Botnets: A Dual Perspective.

His research has since expanded from P2P botnet monitoring and malware analysis into broader areas including intrusion detection, cyber threat intelligence, machine learning for cybersecurity, IoT and cyber-physical security, network security monitoring, and the translation of cybersecurity research into deployable, operational technologies.