Network telescopes collect and record unsolicited Internet-wide traffic destined to a routed but unused address space usually referred to as "Darknet" or "blackhole" address space. Darknets can provide global perspective on Internet behavior and are one of the key data sources used by the networking and security communities to understand malware propagation, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, network scanning, routing misconfigurations, and Internet outages.
In this talk, we present the ORION network telescope operated by researchers at Merit Network and the University of Michigan. Merit's network telescope has been in operation for more than 15 years and it is one of only few large network telescopes accessible to network researchers within the country. With support from the National Science Foundation, we have recently renewed our network telescope infrastructure and we plan to demonstrate to the University of Michigan community (and beyond) how one can leverage this unique data infrastructure to identify nefarious activities within one's network, track the onset of new malware that perform Internet-wide scanning and detect instances of large-scale Denial of Service activities.