Spam Trapping System: Novel security framework to fight against spam botnets

In this paper, we inspire from two analogies: the warfare kill zone and the airport check-in system, to tackle the issue of spam botnet detection. We add a new line of defense to the defense-in-depth model called the third line. This line is represented by a security framework, named the Spam Trapping System (STS) and adopts the prevent-then-detect approach to fight against spam botnets. The framework exploits the application sandboxing principle to prevent the spam from going out of the host and detect the corresponding malware bot. We show that the proposed framework can ensure better security against malware bots. In addition, an analytical study demonstrates that the framework offers optimal performance in terms of detection time and computational cost in comparison to intrusion detection systems based on static and dynamic analysis. © 2014 IEEE.