Benchmarking IP blacklists for financial botnet detection

Every day, hundreds or even thousands of computers are infected with financial malware (i.e. Zeus) that forces them to become zombies or drones, capable of joining massive financial botnets that can be hired by well-organized cyber-criminals in order to steal online banking customers' credentials. Despite the fact that detection and mitigation mechanisms for spam and DDoS-related botnets have been widely researched and developed, it is true that the passive nature (i.e. low network traffic, fewer connections) of financial botnets greatly hinder their countermeasures. Therefore, cyber-criminals are still obtaining high economical profits at relatively low risk with financial botnets.