arXiv subjects

Lambert J. M. Nieuwenhuis

Publications and source records attributed to Lambert J. M. Nieuwenhuis.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Assessing Network Operator Actions to Enhance Digital Sovereignty and Strengthen Network Resilience: A Longitudinal Analysis during the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

We conduct longitudinal and temporal analyses on active DNS measurement data to investigate how the Russia-Ukraine conflict impacted the network infrastructures supporting domain names under ICANN's CZDS new gTLDs. Our findings revealed changes in the physical locations of network infrastructures, utilization of managed DNS services, infrastructure redundancy, and distribution, which started right after the first reported Russian military movements in February 2022. We also found that domains from different countries had varying location preferences when moving their hosting infrastructure. These observed changes suggest that network operators took proactive measures in anticipation of an armed conflict to promote resilience and protect the sovereignty of their networks in response to the conflict.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

No Time for Downtime: Understanding Post-Attack Behaviors by Customers of Managed DNS Providers

We leverage large-scale DNS measurement data on authoritative name servers to study the reactions of domain owners affected by the 2016 DDoS attack on Dyn. We use industry sources of information about domain names to study the influence of factors such as industry sector and website popularity on the willingness of domain managers to invest in high availability of online services. Specifically, we correlate business characteristics of domain owners with their resilience strategies in the wake of DoS attacks affecting their domains. Our analysis revealed correlations between two properties of domains -- industry sector and popularity -- and post-attack strategies. Specifically, owners of more popular domains were more likely to re-act to increase the diversity of their authoritative DNS service for their domains. Similarly, domains in certain industry sectors were more likely to seek out such diversity in their DNS service. For example, domains categorized as General News were nearly 6 times more likely to re-act than domains categorized as Internet Services. Our results can inform managed DNS and other network service providers regarding the potential impact of downtime on their customer portfolio.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2018

Comparing Alternatives to Measure the Impact of DDoS Attack Announcements on Target Stock Prices

The attack intensity of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is increasing every year. Botnets based on internet of things (IOT) devices are now being used to conduct DDoS attacks. The estimation of direct and indirect economic damages caused by these attacks is a complex problem. One of the indirect damage of a DDoS attack can be on the market value of the victim firm. In this article we analyze the impact of 45 different DDoS attack announcements on victim's stock prices. We find that previous studies have a mixed conclusion on the impact of DDoS attack announcements on the victim's stock price. Hence, in this article we evaluate this impact using three different approaches and compare the results. In the first approach, we use the assume the cumulative abnormal returns to be normally distributed and test the hypothesis that a DDoS attack announcement has no impact on the victim's stock price. In the latter two methods, we do not assume a distribution and use the empirical distribution of cumulative abnormal returns to test the hypothesis. We find that the assumption of cumulative abnormal returns being normally distributed leads to overestimation/underestimation of the impact. Finally, we analyze the impact of DDoS attack announcement on victim's stock price in each of the 45 cases and present our results.

q-fin.ST↗

arXiv2018

Business Model of a Botnet

Botnets continue to be an active threat against firms or companies and individuals worldwide. Previous research regarding botnets has unveiled information on how the system and their stakeholders operate, but an insight on the economic structure that supports these stakeholders is lacking. The objective of this research is to analyse the business model and determine the revenue stream of a botnet owner. We also study the botnet life-cycle and determine the costs associated with it on the basis of four case studies. We conclude that building a full scale cyber army from scratch is very expensive where as acquiring a previously developed botnet requires a little cost. We find that initial setup and monthly costs were minimal compared to total revenue.

cs.CY↗