From botnets to MobiBots: A novel malicious communication paradigm for mobile botnets

Cyber security is moving from traditional infrastructure to sophisticated mobile infrastructureless threats. A major concern is that such imminent transition is happening at a rate far exceeding the evolution of security solutions. In fact, the transformation of mobile devices into highly capable computing platforms makes the possibility of security attacks originating from within the mobile network a reality. Today, mobile devices are capable of initiating sophisticated cyberattacks, especially when they coordinate together to form what we call a MobiBot. MobiBots differ from classical botnets in that they exploit mobile operating system vulnerabilities and the advantages of device-to-device communication to mask malicious code propagation.