After examining how a worm is constructed and how its major life cycle steps are implemented, the book scrutinizes targets that worms have attacked over the years, and the likely targets of the immediate future. Moreover, this unique reference explains how to detect worms using a variety of mechanisms, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of three approaches—traffic analysis, honeypots and dark network monitors, and signature analysis. The book concludes with a discussion of four effective defenses against network worms, including host-based defenses, network firewalls and filters, application layer proxies, and a direct attack on the worm network itself.

Along with the enormous growth of the Internet, threats to all computers are increasing in severity, especially from worms, which can easily exploit any weakness in a network and can lead to its total compromise. This is the first book focused exclusively on Internet worms, offering computer and network security professionals solid worm detection and defense strategies for their work in the field.

Text focuses exclusively on Internet worms, offering worm detection and mitigation strategies to help professionals with their challenging work in the field.

About the Author

Jose Nazario is a senior software engineer at Arbor Networks, an internet security company. He is also a consultant and researcher at Crimelabs Research, a think tank and consulting firm. He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University. He has published extensively.