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Date:      Tue, 21 Jan 2003 10:13:57 -0600
From:      Tillman <tillman@seekingfire.com>
To:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Limiting icmp unreach response from 231 to 200 packets per second
Message-ID:  <20030121101357.A9405@seekingfire.com>
In-Reply-To: <200301211600.h0LG08vD022507@dc.cis.okstate.edu>; from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 10:00:08AM -0600
References:  <200301211600.h0LG08vD022507@dc.cis.okstate.edu>

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On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 10:00:08AM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
> 	On rare occasions, a FreeBSD system in our network has
> been known to print the example shown in the subject at a furious
> rate for a short time and then things get back to normal.
> 
> 	Is that what the effects of a ping flood look like?

``Limiting icmp unreach response from 231 to 200 packets per second''

What you're seeing is the kernel limiting ICMP responses to 200/second.
If there are more than 200 ICMP requests per second, and you have
net.inet.icmp.icmplim set to 200 via sysctl (the default value), this
occurs.

This could be a ICMP flood attack. It could also be legimate traffic.
For your network, what would you consider to be a normal number of ICMP
requests per second?

231 packets/second is actually pretty slow if you're on a high speed
local network, so in that situation it's unlikely to be a deliberate
ping flood. I've had network monitoring tools that were badly configured
do something that looked much like this.

- Tillman

-- 
Page 41: Two of the most important Unix traditions are to share and to
help people.
	- Harley Hahn, _The Unix Companion_

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