Skip to content

DEF CON 34 talks are here: 354 talks, summarized and searchable.

Browse DEF CON 34

Large Scale Infiltration and Monitoring of C&C Servers

Jonathan Fuller

Threat IntelTalks39 minIntermediateOpen on YouTube ↗

Where

Talks
ShmooCon 2023

Duration

39 min

Shows how command-and-control servers can be infiltrated and monitored at large scale.

Summary

The talk covers large-scale infiltration of command-and-control (C2) servers, the infrastructure malware uses to receive instructions and move data. It treats these servers as a target that can be reached in volume, rather than as isolated hosts seen from a single infected machine.

The speaker describes monitoring this infrastructure over time, so that the operators' activity and the servers' behaviour can be observed. The focus is on scale, meaning many servers handled together instead of one case at a time.

For practitioners, the main takeaway is that C2 infrastructure can be watched as a source of intelligence. Monitoring it at scale can help with tracking campaigns, understanding how malware operations are run, and spotting new infrastructure earlier, which gives defenders a wider view than single-host analysis alone.

Related talks