Future worms could evade a network of early-warning sensors

The 04 Aug dated article "Worms could dodge Net traps" states "Future worms could evade a network of early-warning sensors hidden across the Internet unless countermeasures are taken, according to new research."

This is the epitome of the papers[1,2,3] presented at Usenix Security Symposium this thursday.

1) But the Wisconsin researchers discovered that the sensor maps furnish just enough information for someone to create an algorithm that can map the location of the sensors "even with reasonable constraint on bandwidth and resources," John Bethencourt, one of the paper's authors, said in his presentation.

2) "If the set of sensors is known, a malicious attacker could avoid the sensors entirely or could overwhelm the sensors with errant data," a team of computer scientists from the University of Wisconsin wrote in its award-winning paper titled "Mapping Internet Sensors with Probe Response Attacks."

3) Researchers from Japan came to a similar conclusion in a paper titled "Vulnerabilities of Passive Internet Threat Monitors." They noted that sensor attackers can identify the location of sensors without the aid of a "complete list of sensor addresses." They also devised several algorithms that managed to pinpoint the sensors "in surprisingly short time."

Be ready for more servere attacks and future. :)