| Subject: Dealing with Denial of Service AttacksH |
Author:
rajat bohra
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Date Posted: 04:39:16 12/13/00 Wed
What do you do when you are faced with denial of service attacks or when you are used as a source for such attacks on the Net? Here are some techniques used to troubleshoot such attacks and tips to defend yourself
The boon that is Internet, which opened the door to the world at one's desktop, is also turning out to be a bane. With only a few mouse clicks from any home computer, one can access any computer anywhere in the world. But the reverse is, unfortunately, also true. The same principle can be used by anyone from anywhere in the world to get control of your computer.
Thus, the open culture brought about by the Internet has its own associated security risks, in the form of 'attacks' which lead to a Denial of Service to a legitimate user5. Out of an assortment of possible attacks on a TCP/IP stack, it is possible to list out IP Spoofing, Ping Flood, Smurfing and SYN Attack. When all these attacks are combined, a powerful attack from a large number of distributed computer systems is generated. This is a Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS) attack, which is the culmination of various kinds of attacks that have surfaced and tormented netizens in recent times.
The new millennium witnessed such powerful attacks on well-known web sites like Yahoo!, Amazon, etc. It was natural for everyone to speculate on the goals of attacks, and hence, the focus is now on preventing such attacks and also on a deep understanding of the attacks themselves.
Classification of Attacks
The word "Attack" is powerful enough to charge a person hearing it. One's weaknesses and strengths come to the fore during an attack. Even history contains incidents of attacks and defenses. And of course, the future will not be free from them. Starting from the primeval Stone Age, in every era, attackers, the means of attacks and the defense techniques have been evolving. From mythological 'Demons' to 'Daemon' (a program that is activated when a certain condition occurs) in computer systems, the objectives of attacks have been the same--make life hard for innocent users.
There are many ways to damage a victim and each such technique is a different attack. The following are the two main types of attacks:
Preventing legitimate users from using the network.
Preventing legitimate users from using services from a specific host.
ICMP/UDP flood and Smurf attacks are of the first category, while SYN attacks belong to the second category. Both these categories in turn belong to the 'Denial of Service' lomd pf attacls/ All these attacks are combined to generate DDoS attacks from a large number of distributed computer systems.
IP Spoofing and Flood Attack
Smurf Attack
SYN Attack
Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS) Attack
Attacks in Future and Conclusion
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