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Date:      Wed, 25 Sep 2013 10:58:12 -0700
From:      Charles Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>
To:        NetOps Admin <netops.admin@epsb.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-ipfw@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: stopping an attack (fraggle like)
Message-ID:  <68FFEAB0-055E-4BDF-85E5-F5C1EF26B3C1@mac.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAOWR6cAGoC=4SSSfbg1NCZWb3NGryG8%2B5N6Kz-72kLP00GpQTQ@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAOWR6cAGoC=4SSSfbg1NCZWb3NGryG8%2B5N6Kz-72kLP00GpQTQ@mail.gmail.com>

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Hi--

On Sep 25, 2013, at 10:23 AM, NetOps Admin <netops.admin@epsb.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>       We are currently getting hit with a DoS attack that looks very
> similar to a Fraggle attack. We are seeing a large amount of UDP =
traffic
> coming at us from thousands of hosts.  The source UDP port is 19 =
(chargen)
> and when it hits it consumes a 2Gb/s link.

OK.  You should get your ISP or whatever upstream connectivity provider =
to
filter out the malicious traffic before it hits your 2Gb/s link.

>       Our main router is a FreeBSD server with ipfw installed.  I have
> tried blocking UDP port 19 incoming from the internet in a firewall =
rule
> but the UDP packets are very large and they are followed by a number =
of
> fragmented packets.  I think that even though I am blocking port 19, =
the
> fragmented packets are getting though and eating up the bandwidth.

Right...filtering this UDP traffic on your side is already too late, =
because
your bandwidth is already being chewed up.

>      I am a little hesitant of using a UDP deny rule with "keep-state" =
to
> try and block the following fragmented packets.  I don't want to cause
> memory issues.

Assuming PMTUD is working, it's not normal to receive any significant # =
of
fragmented packets over the WAN.  Normally you only get them for local =
net
traffic, ie, NFS using 64K UDP packet size or similar.

You can likely drop fragmented UDP traffic entirely, although it won't =
help
much because your bandwidth is still being used.

>      Can I use keep-state with a deny rules?  Will it have issues if I =
use
> keep-state to track thousands of hosts in a saturated 2 Gb/s link?

I believe yes and no, respectively; on the other hand, doing stateful =
tracking
of DoS traffic which you want to discard doesn't strike me as very =
useful, either.

>      Any ideas on how others are controlling this?

You need to filter the malicious traffic before it hits your pipe, as =
much as possible.

Your ISP should be willing to help make that happen; on a good day, they =
might even try
to block ingress of the malicious traffic before it wastes their =
resources, rather than
just working to filter the last step before your pipe.

Regards,
--=20
-Chuck





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