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Date:      Fri, 18 May 2001 22:15:38 +1000 (E. Australia Standard Time)
From:      Doug Young <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   anti-smurf setup
Message-ID:  <Pine.WNT.4.21.0105182211380.1272-100000@oracle>

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I was just browsing through the Complete FreeBSD & stumbled across the
following stuff. If blocking smurf attacks is as simple as this, why 
isn't the line included in the default "etc/rc.conf" ??
 

### Miscellaneous network options: ###
icmp_bmcastecho="NO"               # respond to broadcast ping packets

This  parameter  relates  to  the so-called smurf ``denial of service''
attack: according to the RFCs, a machine should respond to  a  ping  to
its broadcast address.   But  what  happens  if  somebody  pings a remote
network's broadcast address across the Internet, as fast as he can?   
Each  system  on  the remote network  will  reply, completely overloading 
the Internet interface.  Yes, this is silly, but there are silly people 
out there.  If you leave this parameter as it  is,  your  system  will  
not  be vulnerable.  See http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-98.01.smurf.html 
for more details.



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