Re: Port 80 SYN flood-like behavior

From: Stuart Sheldon (stuat_private)
Date: Wed Feb 13 2002 - 15:54:17 PST

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    Yes, we are seeing the same thing over here... It appears to be most
    effective when the attack is pointed at a subnet with a shared web
    server with many IP's bound to the same interface. This also could be an
    attempt to use these system's as a reflector to flood a particular IP
    address out on the web...
    
    Stu Sheldon
    
    
    
    "NESTING, DAVID M (SBCSI)" wrote:
    > 
    > In the last few days I've been seeing what *looks* like a SYN flood attack
    > on port 80 across all IP addresses on my network.  However, if it's a flood,
    > it's not a very strong one.  Modest hardware is able to keep up with the
    > incoming packets without a problem, but the steady flow of SYN packets is
    > still a steady flow.  (On a given system, the number of connections in a
    > SYN_RECVD-ish state numbers 50-100.)  The source IP addresses stay constant
    > for a minute or two and then cease, sometimes as another IP address starts
    > sending its own stream of SYN packets, though occasionally more than one
    > host will be sending traffic at a time.  Source addresses are in a variety
    > of networks, but seem to be consistently dialup or similar type connections.
    > 
    > It "feels" like an attempt at a denial-of-service attack, but why spread it
    > out over so many destination IP addresses (many of which have no Internet
    > presence), and why would the flood be so weak as not to actually affect
    > anything?
    > 
    > Could this be an IDS allowing spoofed IP addresses through while stripping
    > out a "dangerous" payload that might come along with the first ACK response?
    > Or maybe a form of scan where the volume of response carries information
    > they want?  Has anyone seen something similar?
    > 
    > David
    > 
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