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Re: Arbitrary DDoS PoC


From: Gage Bystrom <themadichib0d () gmail com>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:38:10 -0800

Absolutely and that's partly my point. The methods you describe are neigh
exactly how modern general ddos techniques work, which is not how this
works.

One problem is you can't use Facebook or Google as an open proxy like
you're saying because 1.) It assumes you can force Google or Facebook to
make multiple requests for just one of your requests, else you are still
being stuck to how much you can output vs how much they can take. Just
because you can tweak how much you can send does not change the basic
principal behind this and 2.) It no longer becomes a general method because
you must abuse a particular flaw in a particular service to get it to use
its resources to flood the targets resources.

Not trying to really argue your examples, I'm just saying his script and
his "bug report" or whatever you call it is terribly ineffective as a
general method compared to pretty standard techniques like you described,
and does not abuse any implementation or protocol to be a specific flaw a
la the Apache dos bug a few months ago. It's like he's claiming he found
the new smurf attack when all the attack is a script calling curl through a
proxy, torrenting the latest distro install disk is a bigger "DoS"
technique than this.
On Feb 13, 2012 5:48 AM, "adam" <adam () papsy net> wrote:

I have to admit that I've only read the posts here, haven't actually
followed the link, but in response to Gage:

It entirely depends on how it's being done, specifically: what
services/applications are being targeted and in what way. If he's proxying
through "big" servers such as those owned by Facebook, Google, Wikipedia,
etc: then it definitely does make a difference. You're assuming that his
network speed would be the bottleneck, but to make that assumption, you
first have to assume that he's actually waiting around for response data.

Maybe it's too early to convey this in an understandable way, I don't
know. An example scenario that would be effective though: imagine that you
run a web server, also imagine that there's a resource (CPU/bandwidth)
intensive script/page on that server. For the sake of discussion, let's
assume that my home internet speed is 1/10 of your server. We can also
probably assume that your server's network speed is 1/10 of Google's. If I
can force Google's server to request that page, that automatically puts me
at an advantage (especially if I close the connection before Google can
send the response back to me).

Even if you're correct about his particular script, the logic behind your
response is flawed. In the above example, one could use multithreading to
cycle requests to your server through Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, whoever.
As soon as the request has been sent, the connection could be terminated.
If that for some reason wouldn't work, the script could wait until one byte
is received (e.g. the "2" in "200 OK") and close the connection then. At
that point, the bandwidth/resources would have already been used.

The bottom line is that you could easily use the above concepts (and
likely what the OP has designed) to overpower a server/service while using
very little resources of your own. It's all circumstantial anyway though.
My overall point, specifics aside, is that being able to use Google or
Facebook's resources against a target is definitely beneficial and has all
kinds of advantages.

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 7:17 AM, Gage Bystrom <themadichib0d () gmail com>wrote:

Uhh...looks pretty standard boss. You aren't going to DoS a halfway
decent server with that using a single box. Sending your request through
multiple proxies does not magically increase the resource usage of the
target, its still your output power vs their input pipe. Sure it gives a
slight boost in anonymity and obfuscation but does not actually increase
effectiveness. It would even decrease effectiveness because you bear the
burden of having to send to a proxy, giving them ample time to recover from
a given request.

Even if you look at it as a tactic to bypass blacklisting, you still
aren't going to overwhelm the server. That means you need more pawns to do
your bidding. This creates a bit of a problem however as then all your
slaves are running through a limited selection of proxies, reducing the
amount of threats the server needs to blacklist. The circumvention is quite
obvious, which is to not utilize proxies for the pawns....and rely on shear
numbers and/or superior resource exhaustion methods....
 On Feb 13, 2012 4:37 AM, "Lucas Fernando Amorim" <lf.amorim () yahoo com br>
wrote:

With the recent wave of DDoS, a concern that was not taken is the model
where the zombies were not compromised by a Trojan. In the standard
modeling of DDoS attack, the machines are purchased, usually in a VPS,
or are obtained through Trojans, thus forming a botnet. But the
arbitrary shape doesn't need acquire a collection of computers.
Programs, servers and protocols are used to arbitrarily make requests on
the target. P2P programs are especially vulnerable, DNS, internet
proxies, and many sites that make requests of user like Facebook or W3C,
also are.

Precisely I made a proof-of-concept script of 60 lines hitting most of
HTTP servers on the Internet, even if they have protections likely
mod_security, mod_evasive. This can be found on this link [1] at GitHub.
The solution of the problem depends only on the reformulation of
protocols and limitations on the number of concurrent requests and
totals by proxies and programs for a given site, when exceeded returning
a cached copy of the last request.

[1] https://github.com/lfamorim/barrelroll

Cheers,
Lucas Fernando Amorim
http://twitter.com/lfamorim

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