Abstract: Because of IRGbased botnets' central point of failure, more and more botnets turn to decentralized Command & Control Channel. Peer-to-Peer protocol based botnet(P2P botnet) is the most important one. After more than 10 years' development, the technology of P2P botnets has been fully mature. They are more resilient and robust, and more difficult to be eliminated. They are considered to be the new generation of botnets. In this paper,the P2P botnet's evolution process was introduced, the functional structure, taxonomy and execution process of P2P botnet were discussed in detail, the propagation model and research development on technology of tracking, detecting and defending methods were proposed.

Key words: Network security, P2P,13otnet, Malware, Propagation model