[ISN] Denial-of-service-attack worries dominate Cisco patching

http://www.gcn.com/Articles/2009/09/25/Cisco-denial-of-service-worries.aspx

By Joab Jackson
GCN.com
Sept 25, 2009

Abandon all hope, ye who get stung by a denial-of-service attacks.

Well, almost all hope. If the latest semiannual round of security 
advisories from Cisco are any indication, DOS attacks continue to be a 
serious -- and largely unsolvable -- problem for networks.

Earlier this week, Cisco issued nine advisories for its Internetwork 
Operating System (IOS), the operating system software for most of the 
company's routers and switches. The company also issued two advisories 
for its Cisco Unified Communications Manager. The advisories came about 
as part of the company's routine half-year patching cycle. In total, the 
11 advisories cover 12 potential vulnerabilities.

Of the vulnerabilities Cisco issued, eight address vulnerabilities that 
could have left customers open to denial-of-service attacks. In a DOS 
attack, an attacker will flood a server or piece of networking equipment 
with packets requesting a service of one sort or another. A distributed 
denial of service (DDOS) consists of a flood of phony requests sent from 
multiple computers, both as a way to avoid detection and to increase the 
severity of the attack.

According to the advisories, attackers could down a Cisco router or 
switch via a DOS attack by flooding them with H.323 multimedia 
protocol-based packets, with Network Time Protocol packets, with Session 
Initiation Protocol packets, or packets carrying requests in a number of 
other protocols.

[...]


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