Re: Simple DOS attack on FW-1

From: Lance Spitzner (spitznerat_private)
Date: Sat Jul 31 1999 - 21:46:08 PDT

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    On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Jeff Roberson wrote:
    
    > It seems to me that if they maintain TCP state they could set a
    > significantly smaller timeout if the connection is not established. So a
    > timeout of a minute should be set on the initial syn request, and the
    > larger timeout should only be used after the connection is established.
    
    Actually, this is how it DOES work.  When you get a chance, check out my
    website, where I go into detail on how it works.  Where it breaks down is
    its handling of ACK packets.  If I intiate a connection with an ACK packet,
    then the connection is automatically added to the connections table for
    3600 seconds, regardless if the remote system responds or not.  You now
    have a dead connection filling your connections table for an hour.  Send
    alot of these packets, and you quickly fill your connections table. An
    example is "nmap -sP -PT80 10.0.0.0/8" launched by an internal system
    would quickly fill most connections tables.
    
    > Also, if they implemented a circular buffer where connections that had
    > been idle the longest were disconnected in favor of new connections their
    > scalability might increase some.
    
    Excellent recommendation, I'll pass it along to Check Point!
    
    Lance Spitzner
    http://www.enteract.com/~lspitz/papers.html
    Internetworking & Security Engineer
    Dimension Enterprises Inc
    



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