Re: Simple DOS attack on FW-1

From: Victoria E. Lease (leaseat_private)
Date: Tue Aug 03 1999 - 06:51:30 PDT

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    [Lance Spitzner]
    > On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Jeff Roberson wrote:
    > > 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!
    
    Neat idea. Am I the only person who sees the potential for even further abuse
    if this 'feature' is added?
    
    Wouldn't this allow DoS attackers to not only keep new connections from
    being established, but also to forcefully close already-established valid
    connections? Or am I missing something?
    
    I think it might work, though, if non-established, ie only two of three
    handshakes completed, connections were kept in a circular buffer. That way,
    the worst abuse that could happen would be for DoS'ers to incur a *chance*
    of established connections failing, and they wouldn't be able to affect
    already-established connections. They'd have to keep hammering at the
    unestablished-connection buffer, and very quickly, too, in order to keep
    valid connections from making it through.
    
    Perhaps this is what was intended by the suggestion in the first place?
    



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