Section 5.1. Network Attacks

Network attacks are the most popular type of attack because they are easy to execute (automated tools are available) and difficult to defend against. Since these attacks are not specific to Apache, they fall outside the scope of this book and thus they are not covered in detail in the following sections. As a rule of thumb, only your upstream provider can defend you from attacks performed on the network level. At the very least you will want your provider to cut off the attacks at their routers so you do not have to pay for the bandwidth incurred by the attacks.

5.1.1. Malformed Traffic

The simplest network attacks target weaknesses in implementations of the TCP/IP protocol. Some implementations are not good at handling error conditions and cause systems to crash or freeze. Some examples of this type of attack are:

These types of attacks have only historical significance, since most TCP/IP implementations are no longer vulnerable.

5.1.2. Brute-Force Attacks

In the simplest form, an effective network attack can be performed from a single host with a fast Internet connection against a host with a slower Internet connection. By using brute force, sending large numbers of traffic packets creates a flood attack and disrupts target host operations. The concept is illustrated in Figure 5-1.

At the same time, this type of attack is the easiest to defend against. All you need to do is to examine the incoming traffic (e.g., using a packet sniffer like tcpdump), discover the IP address from which the traffic is coming from, and instruct your upstream provider to block the address at their router.

At first glance, you may want to block the attacker's IP address on your own firewall but that will not help. The purpose of this type of attack is to saturate the Internet connection. By the time a packet reaches your router (or server), it has done its job.

Be prepared and have contact details of your upstream provider (or server hosting company) handy. Larger companies have many levels of support and quickly reaching someone knowledgable may be difficult. Research telephone numbers in advance. If you can, get to know your administrators before you need their help.

Steve Gibson wrote a fascinating story about his first fight against a DoS attack:

5.1.3. SYN Flood Attacks

If you are sitting on a high-speed Internet link, it may be difficult for the attacker to successfully use brute-force attacks. You may be able to filter the offending packets on your router and continue with operations almost as normal (still paying for the incurred bandwidth, unfortunately).

SYN Flood attacks also rely on sending a large number of packets, but their purpose is not to saturate the connection. Instead, they exploit weaknesses in the TCP/IP protocol to render the target's network connection unusable. A TCP/IP connection can be thought of as a pipe connecting two endpoints. Three packets are needed to establish a connection: SYN, SYN+ACK, and ACK. This process is known as a three-way handshake, and it is illustrated in Figure 5-2.

In the normal handshaking process, a host wanting to initiate a connection sends a packet with a SYN flag set. Upon receiving the packet and assuming the server is open for connections on the target port, the target host sends back a packet with flags SYN and ACK set. Finally, the client host sends a third packet with the flag ACK set. The connection is now established until one of the hosts sends a packet with the RST flag set.

The situation exploited in a SYN flood attack is that many operating systems have fixed-length queues to keep track of connections that are being opened. These queues are large but not unlimited. The attacker will exploit this by sending large numbers of SYN packets to the target without sending the final, third packet. The target will eventually remove the connection from the queue but not before the timeout for receiving the third packet expires. The only thing an attacker needs to do is send new SYN packets at a faster rate than the target removes them from the queue. Since the timeout is usually measured in minutes and the attacker can send thousands of packets in a second, this turns out to be very easy.

In a flood of bogus SYN packets, legitimate connection requests have very little chance of success.

Linux comes with an effective defense against SYN flood attacks called SYN cookies. Instead of allocating space in the connection queue after receiving the first packet the Linux kernel just sends a cookie in the SYN+ACK packet and allocates space for the connection only after receiving the ACK packet. D. J. Bernstein created the SYN cookies idea and maintains a page where their history is documented: http://cr.yp.to/syncookies.html.

For permanent changes, put the same command in one of the startup scripts located in /etc/init.d (or /etc/rc.local on Red Hat systems).

5.1.4. Source Address Spoofing

The above attacks are annoying and sometimes difficult to handle but in general easy to defend against because the source address of the attack is known. Unfortunately, nothing prevents attackers from faking the source address of the traffic they create. When such traffic reaches the attack target, the target will have no idea of the actual source and no reason to suspect the source address is a fake.

To make things worse, attackers will typically use a different (random) source address for each individual packet. At the receiving end there will be an overwhelmingly large amount of seemingly legitimate traffic. Not being able to isolate the real source, a target can do little. In theory, it is possible to trace the traffic back to the source. In practice, since the tracing is mostly a manual operation, it is very difficult to find technicians with the incentive and the time to do it.

Source address spoofing can largely be prevented by putting outbound traffic filtering in place. This type of filtering is known as egress filtering. In other words, organizations must make sure they are sending only legitimate traffic to the Internet. Each organization will most likely know the address space it covers, and it can tell whether the source address of an outgoing packet makes sense. If it makes no sense, the packet is most likely a part of a DoS attack. Having egress filtering in place helps the Internet community, but it also enables organizations to detect compromised hosts within their networks.

Core providers may have trouble doing this since they need to be able to forward foreign traffic as part of their normal operation. Many other operators (cable and DSL providers) are in a better position to do this, and it is their customers that contribute most to DoS attacks.

Address spoofing and egress filtering are described in more detail in the SANS Institute paper "Egress filtering v0.2" at http://www.sans.org/y2k/egress.htm.

5.1.5. Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

With most content-serving servers sitting on high bandwidth links these days, attackers are having trouble finding single systems they can compromise that have connections fast enough to be used for attacks. That is, most systems' network connections are fast enough that one single system cannot do much harm to another system. This has led to the creation of a new breed of attacks. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are performed by a large number of systems, each contributing its share to form a massive attack network. The combined power is too big even for the largest web sites.

When Yahoo! was attacked in February 2000, the combined bandwidth targeted at them was around 1 Gbps at its peak, with hundreds of attacking stations participating in the attack.

Distributed attacks are rarely performed manually. Instead, automated scripts are used to break into vulnerable systems and bring them under the control of a master system. Compromised systems are often referred to as zombies. Such a network of zombies can be used to attack targets at will. The other use for zombies is to send spam. An example zombie network is illustrated in Figure 5-3.

These DDoS scripts are often publicly available and even people with very little skill can use them. Some well-known DDoS attack tools are:

Viruses and worms are often used for DoS attacks. The target address is sometimes hardcoded into the virus, so it is not necessary for a virus to communicate back to the master host to perform its attacks. These types of attacks are practically impossible to trace.

5.1.6. Reflection DoS Attacks

Address spoofing is easy to use and most DoS attacks use it. Because target systems believe the source address received in a TCP packet, address spoofing allows attackers to attack a target through other, genuine Internet systems:

The attacker sends a packet to a well-connected system and forges the source address to look like the packet is coming from the target of his attack. The packet may request a connection to be established (SYN).
That system receives the packet and replies (to the target, not to the actual source) with a SYN+ACK response.
The target is now being attacked by an innocent system.

The flow of data from the attacker to the systems being used for reflection is usually low in volume, low enough not to motivate their owners to investigate the origin. The combined power of traffic against the target can be devastating. These types of attacks are usually distributed and are known as distributed reflection denial of service (DRDoS) attacks (the concept of such attacks is illustrated in Figure 5-4). Steve Gibson wrote a follow-up to his story on DoS attacks, including coverage of DRDoS attacks:

5.1. Network Attacks

5.1.1. Malformed Traffic

5.1.2. Brute-Force Attacks

Figure 5-1. Brute-force DoS attack

5.1.3. SYN Flood Attacks

Figure 5-2. A three-way handshake

5.1.4. Source Address Spoofing

5.1.5. Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Figure 5-3. Distributed denial of service attack

5.1.6. Reflection DoS Attacks

Figure 5-4. Distributed reflection denial of service attack