Re: Denial of Service: Commercial Defense products

[Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com>]

Actually, FinAckSyn; the Guard doesn't work that way.  Traffic headed  
into zones under protection is routed into the Guard itself, and then  
various forms of antispoofing and anomaly-detection are performed to  
determine whether or not the traffic is valid.  Invalid traffic is  
dropped by the Guard, while valid traffic is re-injected into the  
network in order to continue towards its destination.

The Guard is usually configured as an on-demand device; it's only  
'inline' when needed, the rest of the time, traffic follows its  
normal course through the network.  This type of operation ensures  
that the Guard is only examining traffic when such examination is  
required, and also doesn't require the network to be re-engineered in  
order to induce artificial symmetry.

In the case of your SP using the Guard to protect your gaming  
servers, it sounds to me as if some baselining is needed in order to  
fine-tune the Guard's profiles of what constitute normal and valid  
traffic to your gaming servers.

For more information on the Guard, NetFlow, and Arbor, see this URL:

        http://www.cisco.com/go/cleanpipes


On Nov 24, 2005, at 10:58 AM, FinAckSyn wrote:

> Hi Joel,
>
> Cisco Guard doesn't actually 'stop' SYN packets - it
> tells routers where the bad traffic is coming from,
> and gets the routers to block by blackholing the
> route.
> So yes, may look great in a lab environment where your
> Cisco 7200s are happily throwing SYN packets into
> oblivion, but in the real world, both the SYN Cookie
> mechanism and routing manipulations cause a lot of
> problems with real world traffic.
> This is where an inline device is so important -
> something that can understand both ends of the
> connection and work out whether it's valid or not
> before throwing it away.
> Our ISP uses Cisco Guard, but we tell them to turn it
> off, unless absolutely necessary to protect their own
> peering points, as if it's left on always, it throws
> our customer's customers out of their online gaming
> sessions (which is bad news for them and us!).
>
> Regards,
>
> Matt
>
> --- Joel Friedman <jfriedman () datapipe com> wrote:
>
> > Riverhead (now Cisco Guard) is by far the best
> > choice.  We had a little in
> > house shoot-out where we attacked multiple vendors'
> > hardware and graphed
> > their results into the millions of packets per
> > second.  Due to NDA's we are
> > not allowed to disclose which vendors, nor their
> > results, but I can say that
> > Riverhead successfully defended against more than
> > twice the load of its
> > competitors...at the time it was able to stop
> > approximately 1.5 million SYN
> > packets per second while still allowing legitimate
> > traffic.
> >
> > IMHO there is no other choice.
> >
> > --Joel
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kyle Quest
> > [mailto:Kyle.Quest () networkengines com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 2:42 PM
> > To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
> > Subject: RE: Denial of Service: Commercial Defense
> > products
> >
> > You should really look at Top Layer if you are
> > serious
> > about defending against denial of service attacks.
> > Don't even waste your time on Mazu or McAfee.
> > Tipping Point is suppose to get better at it
> > as well (they were working on some news things
> > the last time I had a chance to talk to one
> > of their top guys), but I don't know if it's
> > already available.
> >
> > I would recommend looking at the NSS reports
> > (http://www.nss.co.uk/download/download.htm).
> > Unfortunately, the online version of the report
> > that includes Top Layer review is no longer
> > available,
> > but you can still buy it for a couple of bucks.
> >
> > Kyle
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ogle [mailto:myinfosec () gmail com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 4:44 AM
> > To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
> > Subject: Denial of Service: Commercial Defense
> > products
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> > I have an ISP customer who want to protect their
> > network and their
> > subscriber's network.
> > In "Internet Denial of Service: Attack and Defense
> > Mecahnisms" book, I
> > noticed 7 commercial products.
> > 1. Mazu Enforcer by Mazu Networks
> > 2. Peakflow by Arbor Networks
> > 3. WS Series Apliances by Webscreen Technologies
> > 4. Captus IPS by Captus Networks
> > 5. MANAnet Shield by CS3
> > 6. Cisco Traffic Anomaly Detector XT and Cisco Guard
> > XT
> > 7. StealthWatch by Lancope
> >
> > Since I'm new with this type of products, is there
> > any reference out
> > there to help me choose the right solution to my
> > customer ?
> > Is there any problem if I use IPS (ie: TippingPoint,
> > McAfee) for this
> > solution ?
> >
> > Thanks.
>
>
>
>                 
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com> // 408.527.6376 voice

 Algorithm agility is an essential feature in any Internet protocol.

                     -- Bruce Schneier




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