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Date:      Tue, 21 Jun 2005 23:08:15 -0500
From:      Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To:        "Troy G." <troyg@digitek-solutions.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Possible Attack?
Message-ID:  <20050622040815.GA49171@dan.emsphone.com>
In-Reply-To: <42B8D72C.1080609@digitek-solutions.com>
References:  <42B8D72C.1080609@digitek-solutions.com>

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In the last episode (Jun 21), Troy G. said:
> I was going through a few servers tonight and came across this in
> /var/log/messages.  This particular server functions mainly as our
> primary webserver.  Its running FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE.  I decided to
> take a closer look to see what was generating these entries by
> loading up trafshow.  I noticed quite a bit of icmp requests coming
> in.  I created an access-list on the cisco and filtered icmp to this
> host and the messages kept logging.  It's obvious I didn't see any
> icmp anymore on the server but is this system under a heavy load?  I
> dont see the load being that high according to top.  Any suggestions?
> 
> Jun 21 21:50:55 mx1 /kernel: Limiting closed port RST response from 230 to 200 packets per second
> Jun 21 21:51:23 mx1 /kernel: Limiting closed port RST response from 222 to 200 packets per second
> Jun 21 21:53:02 mx1 /kernel: Limiting closed port RST response from 230 to 200 packets per second

These don't have anything to do with incoming ICMP packets.  They are
notices that something is trying to access ports that nothing is
listening on, and the kernel is rate-limiting the number of "ICMP port
unreachable" messages it's sending.  You don't want to filter ICMP,
since that will break PMTUD ( http://pmtud.rfc822.org ) and annoys
people trying to traceroute to your webserver.

If you don't currently have any other ACLs at your router, you're most
likely seeing the usual background internet traffic (portscans from
compromised machines mainly).  It's best to block all incoming TCP or
UDP traffic except for the ones you want people to see (80/tcp if it's
just a webserver).  Depending on what version of IOS you're running,
you may have the IOS Firewall feature set, which is easy to configure
from the web interface.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com



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