Botnet Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) Detection Evasion
Date: 2020-01-01
Affected: Palo Alto Networks ML-based DGA detection module
Attack vector: adversarial-input
Category: research
Severity: High

The Palo Alto Networks Security AI research team was able to bypass a Convolutional Neural Network based botnet Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) detector using a generic domain name mutation technique. It is a generic domain mutation technique which can evade most ML-based DGA detection modules. The generic mutation technique evades most ML-based DGA detection modules DGA and can be used to test the effectiveness and robustness of all DGA detection methods developed by security companies in the industry before they is deployed to the production environment.


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):