nanog mailing list archives

Re: Effective ways to deal with DDoS attacks?


From: "Christopher L. Morrow" <chris () UU NET>
Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 16:08:47 +0000 (GMT)




On Thu, 2 May 2002, Hank Nussbacher wrote:


At 01:49 AM 02-05-02 +0100, Avleen Vig wrote:

As time goes by, tools are being developed (in fact they're used now) that
completely randomize the TCP or UDP ports attacked, or use a variety of
icmp types in the attack.
So cuurrently the only way you can 'block' such attacks is to block all
packets for the offending protocol as far upstream as you possibly can,
but this is not ideal.

If you're being attacked by a SYN flood, you can ask try to rate-limit the
flood at your border (possible on Cisco IOS 12.0 and higher, and probably
other routers too?)

ACLs have been a good tool for the past number of years to stop DOS attacks
but they suffer one very bad feature - they throw away the good packets
along with the bad packets.  The same goes for CAR.  The same goes for
taking a /32 and null routing it.  Consider Amazon being hit with a DDOS
attack from random spoofed IPs to their web site.  You can't block on
source IP since it is random.  If you block on destination IP - you end up
taking Amazon off the network (the ultimate aim of the attacker) at a daily
revenue loss of over $1M.

So, just filter and track quickly... move the block as far back as you
can. Have the customer remain agile also. :)


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