CFP: Special Issue of COMPUTER NETWORS (ELSEVIER) on "Botnet Activity: Analysis, Detection and Shutdown"

Apologies for multiple copies of this announcement.
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Dear Colleagues,

Please consider the following opportunity to submit and publish original
scientific results to a SPECIAL ISSUE of COMPUTER NETWORKS
(ELSEVIER journal) on "Botnet Activity: Analysis, Detection and Shutdown".

The submission deadline is set to December 1st, 2011.

http://ees.elsevier.com/comnet/

A pdf version of this CFP is available at http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/guofei/CFP_COMNET-Botnets.pdf
Please help distribute. Thanks!

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Large scale attacks and criminal activities experienced in recent
years have exposed the Internet to serious security breaches, and
alarmed the world regarding cyber crime. In the center of this problem
are the so called botnets -- collections of infected zombie machines
(bots) controlled by the botmaster to perpetrate malicious activities
and massive attacks. Some recent botnets are composed of millions of
infected machines, making use of this attack vector inevitably
harmfully. Hence, it is paramount to detect, analyze and shutdown such
overlay networks before they become active. Research on botnet
activity is mostly related to detection and disruption.

Detection of botnets has focused on monitoring bot activities,
especially during the spread of malicious software to infect new hosts
(initial infection phase) and the communication messages exchanged
between bots and botmasters (rallying and updating phases). Some
behavioral aspects are common: bots have to signal the botmaster
informing they are alive, each time their hosts are started; bots send
messages whenever connecting and joining with the botnet; the
botmaster has to send commands to each zombie machine before
initiating malicious activities.

This special issue of Computer Networks is intended to foster the
dissemination of high quality research in all aspects regarding botnet
activity, detection and countermeasures. The objective of this special
issue is to publish papers presenting detection algorithms, traffic
monitoring and identification, protocols and architectures, as well as
botnet modeling, behavior, simulation, statistics, dissemination,
analysis, preventive procedures and possible countermeasures.
Only technical papers describing previously unpublished, original,
state-of-the-art research, and not currently under review by a
conference or journal will be considered. We solicit papers in a
variety of topics related to botnet research including, but not
limited to:

- Traffic Monitoring and Detection Algorithms
- Data Collection, Statistics and Analysis
- Modeling Behavior and Simulation
- Protocols and Architectures (IRC, HTTP, P2P, etc)
- Firewalls and IDS
- Cyber Crime Case Studies
- Reverse Engineering and Automated Analysis of Bots
- Honeypots and Honeynets
- New Platforms: Cellular and Wireless networks, Mobile devices, TV, etc.
- Legal Issues and Countermeasures
- Underground Markets, Vulnerability Markets and Zero-day Economics
- Mini-Botnets


Guest Editors

Ronaldo Salles
Military Institute of Engineering
PraçGeneral Tibú 80, 22290-270, R.J. – Brazil
salles@ieee.org

Guofei Gu
Texas A&M University
3112 TAMU, HRBB College Station, TX 77843-3112 – USA
guofei@cse.tamu.edu

Thorsten Holz
Ruhr-University Bochum
Universitatsstrasse 150, 44780 Bochum – Germany
thorsten.holz@rub.de

Morton Swimmer
Trend Micro Deutschland, GmbH
Zeppelinstr. 1
85399 Hallbergmoos - Germany
swimmer@acm.org



Paper submission: 1st Dec 2011

Acceptance notification: 1st Mar 2012

Final papers: 1st May 2012



Submission format

The submitted papers must be clearly written in excellent English and
describe original research which is not published nor currently under
review by other journals or conferences. Author guidelines for
preparation of manuscript can be found at
www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet/


Submission Guideline

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted
through the Elsevier Editorial System (EES). The authors must select
"Special Issue: Botnets" when they reach the “Article Type” step in
the submission process. The EES website is located at:
http://ees.elsevier.com/comnet/


Guide for Authors

This site will guide you stepwise through the creation and uploading
of you article. The guide for Authors can be found on the journal
homepage (www.elsevier.com/comnet/).