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Date:      Wed, 09 Feb 2000 17:16:24 -0800
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>
To:        Ed Gold <edgold@mindspring.com>
Cc:        "hackers@FreeBSD.ORG" <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Regarding DOS violations 
Message-ID:  <2028.950145384@zippy.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Feb 2000 19:43:42 EST." <38A209BE.738ED208@mindspring.com> 

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> I am wondering if FreeBSD should take any action to protect our users.

Considering the type of attack, a convergence DoS which swamped
Yahoo's routers, claiming that FreeBSD could somehow "protect" its
users from even this most typical type of attack right now would be
untrue.

In reality, the Yahoo experience showed us that FreeBSD coped about as
well as could be expected (in version 3.4) with this and it's really
the "internet infrastructure", as it relates to the various ISPs and
ASPs involved, which is long-overdue for some attention in this area.
Vendors have simply been too busy selling the gold rush, it seems, to
realize (or admit) that only two out of every five covered wagons are
currently making it through the Donner pass these days. :-)

That's not to say that the FreeBSD project isn't looking at adding
"hardening" the OS in all the practical ways in which it's possible to
do so, but adding request-rate limiting to, say, Apache would probably
provide little more than a false sense of security.  I'd expect any
reasonably well-known shop to have their border routers overwhelmed by
smurf and stream attacks long before such rate-limiting had any
practical effect.

- Jordan


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