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Date:      Wed, 21 Jun 2000 16:47:45 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        Maksimov Maksim <maksim@tts.tomsk.su>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: How defend from stream2.c attack?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006211640560.61483-100000@achilles.silby.com>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20000621125756.048b6d80@localhost>

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On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Brett Glass wrote:

> At 10:15 AM 6/21/2000, Mike Silbersack wrote:
>   
> >Is ICMP_BANDLIM enabled?  If so, crank net.inet.icmp.icmplim down to 20 or
> >so, and you should be just as protected as if enabling the restrict RST
> >option.
> 
> If it's an ACK flood, limiting RSTs is important because the response to 
> an unexpected ACK is normally supposed to be a RST, not an ICMP packet.

ICMP_BANDLIM isn't a totally correct name, actually.  It currently causes
ICMP unreachables _and_ RST packets to be rate limited.

> The various "stream.c" exploits cause ICMP floods as well, but this is
> a secondary effect. 
> 
> The ICMP packets are triggered when RSTs from the attacked host(s) hit the 
> upstream router and the spoofed addresses are detected. If there are fewer 
> (or no) RSTs, there will not be an ICMP flood.
>
> It's a good idea to turn on ICMP bandwitdh limiting, RST restriction, and
> SYN+FIN dropping in your kernel configuration and rc.conf.

Given that ICMP_BANDLIM rate limits RST, it's probably better to turn on
ICMP_BANDLIM and set the threshold to something in the sub-50 range.  I
guess if you're not using T/TCP (which I doubt anyone is anyway), turning
on syn+fin dropping isn't a bad idea either.

However, I'm still puzzled by the original poster's problem; from the
results matt/others posted when the other stream related fixes were
applied, I was under the impression that you'd still be more than OK with
the default setting of 200.  I don't think a freeze should result.

Mike "Silby" Silbersack



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