HTTP Header Analysis Author:Roland Zegers Master System and Network Engineering University of Amsterdam
[email protected] August 31, 2015 Abstract Many companies are busy finding new solutions for detecting the growing amount of malware that is propagated over the Internet. A lot of anti-malware developers use the unique signature of the payload as a detection mechanism. Others look at the communication channels. Research has been done to see what information HTTP headers can provide. Different aspects of headers have been investigated in order to track malware: header sizes, type errors or the presence or absence of certain headers. This information is then used to create a fingerprint or signature. The goal of this research was to look at order of HTTP request headers to see if it is possible to determine if malware is present. Although the header order of malware is very irregular, it does not stand out when compared to HTTP headers from regular traffic. Websites have their own header order as well as programs that communicate over HTTP like Windows updates and anti-virus solutions. Some websites request special services or offer specific content. This leads to the insertion of extra headers, like security-, SOAP- or experimental headers, which create inconsistency in the order of the headers. As a result of this, it is unfeasible to use header order to reliably identify systems or malware. 1 Contents 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Rationale . .3 1.2 Related research . .3 2 Research Questions 4 2.1 Problem definition . .4 2.2 Research Questions . .4 3 Request headers 4 3.1 HTTP header structure .