Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs) are frequently used to generate numerous
domains for use by botnets. These domains are often utilized as rendezvous
points for servers that malware has command and control over. There are many
algorithms that are used to generate domains, however many of these algorithms
are simplistic and easily detected by traditional machine learning techniques.
In this paper, three variants of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are
optimized to generate domains which have similar characteristics of benign
domains, resulting in domains which greatly evade several state-of-the-art deep
learning based DGA classifiers. We additionally provide a detailed analysis
into offensive usability for each variant with respect to repeated and existing
domain collisions. Finally, we fine-tune the state-of-the-art DGA classifiers
by adding GAN generated samples to their original training datasets and analyze
the changes in performance. Our results conclude that GAN based DGAs are
superior in evading DGA classifiers in comparison to traditional DGAs, and of
the variants, the Wasserstein GAN with Gradient Penalty (WGANGP) is the highest
performing DGA for uses both offensively and defensively.