Denial-of-service attack

n computing, a denial-of-service (DoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users, such as to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is where the attack source is more than one–and often thousands–of unique IP addresses.

Criminal perpetrators of DoS attacks often target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways; but motives of revenge, blackmai or activism can be behind other attacks.

Symptoms

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) defines symptoms of denial-of-service attacks to include:

Unusually slow network performance (opening files or accessing web sites)
Unavailability of a particular web site
Inability to access any web site
Dramatic increase in the number of spam emails received—(this type of DoS attack is considered an e-mail bomb)
Disconnection of a wireless or wired internet connection
Long term denial of access to the web or any internet services

Denial-of-service attacks can also lead to problems in the network 'branches' around the actual computer being attacked. For example, the bandwidth of a router between the Internet and a LAN may be consumed by an attack, compromising not only the intended computer, but also the entire network or other computers on the LAN.

If the attack is conducted on a sufficiently large scale, entire geographical regions of Internet connectivity can be compromised without the attacker's knowledge or intent by incorrectly configured or flimsy network infrastructure equipment.

Attack techniques

A denial-of-service attack is characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. There are two general forms of DoS attacks: those that crash services and those that flood services.

The most serious attacks are distributed and in many or most cases involve forging of IP sender addresses (IP address spoofing) so that the location of the attacking machines cannot easily be identified, nor can filtering be done based on the source address.

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) flood

See also: Smurf attack, Ping flood and Ping of death

A smurf attack relies on misconfigured network devices that allow packets to be sent to all computer hosts on a particular network via the broadcast address of the network, rather than a specific machine. The attacker will send large numbers of IP packets with the source address faked to appear to be the address of the victim. The network's bandwidth is quickly used up, preventing legitimate packets from getting through to their destination.

Ping flood is based on sending the victim an overwhelming number of ping packets, usually using the "ping" command from Unix-like hosts (the -t flag on Windows systems is much less capable of overwhelming a target, also the -l (size) flag does not allow sent packet size greater than 65500 in Windows). It is very simple to launch, the primary requirement being access to greater bandwidth than the victim.

Ping of death is based on sending the victim a malformed ping packet, which will lead to a system crash on a vulnerable system.

(S)SYN flood

Teardrop attacks

A teardrop attack involves sending mangled IP fragments with overlapping, over-sized payloads to the target machine. This can crash various operating systems because of a bug in their TCP/IP fragmentation re-assembly code. Windows 3.1x, Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, as well as versions of Linux prior to versions 2.0.32 and 2.1.63 are vulnerable to this attack.

(Although in September 2009, a vulnerability in Windows Vista was referred to as a "teardrop attack", this targeted SMB2 which is a higher layer than the TCP packets that teardrop used).

Peer-to-peer attacks

Main article: Direct Connect (protocol) § Direct Connect used for DDoS attacks

Attackers have found a way to exploit a number of bugs in peer-to-peer servers to initiate DDoS attacks. The most aggressive of these peer-to-peer-DDoS attacks exploits DC++. With peer-to-peer there is no botnet and the attacker does not have to communicate with the clients it subverts. Instead, the attacker acts as a "puppet master," instructing clients of large peer-to-peer file sharing hubs to disconnect from their peer-to-peer network and to connect to the victim's website instead.

Permanent denial-of-service attacks

Permanent denial-of-service (PDoS), also known loosely as phlashing, is an attack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. Unlike the distributed denial-of-service attack, a PDoS attack exploits security flaws which allow remote administration on the management interfaces of the victim's hardware, such as routers, printers, or other networking hardware. The attacker uses these vulnerabilities to replace a device's firmware with a modified, corrupt, or defective firmware image—a process which when done legitimately is known as flashing. This therefore "bricks" the device, rendering it unusable for its original purpose until it can be repaired or replaced.

The PDoS is a pure hardware targeted attack which can be much faster and requires fewer resources than using a botnet in a DDoS attack. Because of these features, and the potential and high probability of security exploits on Network Enabled Embedded Devices (NEEDs), this technique has come to the attention of numerous hacker communities.

PhlashDance is a tool created by Rich Smith (an employee of Hewlett-Packard's Systems Security Lab) used to detect and demonstrate PDoS vulnerabilities at the 2008 EUSecWest Applied Security Conference in London.

Application-level floods

Various DoS-causing exploits such as buffer overflow can cause server-running software to get confused and fill the disk space or consume all available memory or CPU time.

Other kinds of DoS rely primarily on brute force, flooding the target with an overwhelming flux of packets, oversaturating its connection bandwidth or depleting the target's system resources. Bandwidth-saturating floods rely on the attacker having higher bandwidth available than the victim; a common way of achieving this today is via distributed denial-of-service, employing a botnet. Another target of DDoS attacks may be to produce added costs for the application operator, when the latter uses resources based on Cloud Computing. In this case normally application used resources are tied to a needed Quality of Service level (e.g. responses should be less than 200 ms) and this rule is usually linked to automated software (e.g. Amazon CloudWatch) to raise more virtual resources from the provider in order to meet the defined QoS levels for the increased requests.The main incentive behind such attacks may be to drive the application owner to raise the elasticity levels in order to handle the increased application traffic, in order to cause financial losses or force them to become less competitive. Other floods may use specific packet types or connection requests to saturate finite resources by, for example, occupying the maximum number of open connections or filling the victim's disk space with logs.

A "banana attack" is another particular type of DoS. It involves redirecting outgoing messages from the client back onto the client, preventing outside access, as well as flooding the client with the sent packets.

An attacker with shell-level access to a victim's computer may slow it until it is unusable or crash it by using a fork bomb.

A kind of application-level DoS attack is XDoS (or XML DoS) which can be controlled by modern web application firewalls (WAFs).

Nuke

A Nuke is an old denial-of-service attack against computer networks consisting of fragmented or otherwise invalid ICMP packets sent to the target, achieved by using a modified ping utility to repeatedly send this corrupt data, thus slowing down the affected computer until it comes to a complete stop.

A specific example of a nuke attack that gained some prominence is the WinNuke, which exploited the vulnerability in the NetBIOS handler in Windows 95. A string of out-of-band data was sent to TCP port 139 of the victim's machine, causing it to lock up and display a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

HTTP POST DDOS attack

First discovered in 2009, the HTTP POST attack sends a complete, legitimate HTTP POST header, which includes a 'Content-Length' field to specify the size of the message body to follow. However, the attacker then proceeds to send the actual message body at an extremely slow rate (e.g. 1 byte/110 seconds). Due to the entire message being correct and complete, the target server will attempt to obey the 'Content-Length' field in the header, and wait for the entire body of the message to be transmitted, hence slowing it down. Further combined with the fact that Apache will, by default, accept requests up to 2GB in size, this attack can be particularly powerful. HTTP POST attacks are difficult to differentiate from legitimate connections, and are therefore able to bypass some protection systems. OWASP, an open source web application security project, has released a testing tool to test the security of servers against this type of attack.

R-U-Dead-Yet? (RUDY)

This attack targets web applications by starvation of available sessions on the web server. Much like Slowloris, RUDY keeps sessions at halt using never-ending POST transmissions and sending an arbitrarily large content-length header value.

Slow Read attack

Slow Read attack sends legitimate application layer requests but reads responses very slowly, thus trying to exhaust the server's connection pool. Slow reading is achieved by advertising a very small number for the TCP Receive Window size and at the same time by emptying clients' TCP receive buffer slowly. That naturally ensures a very low data flow rate.

Distributed attack

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. Such an attack is often the result of multiple compromised systems (for example a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic. A botnet is a network of zombie computers programmed to receive commands without the owners' knowledge. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted. The major advantages to an attacker of using a distributed denial-of-service attack are that multiple machines can generate more attack traffic than one machine, multiple attack machines are harder to turn off than one attack machine, and that the behavior of each attack machine can be stealthier, making it harder to track and shut down. These attacker advantages cause challenges for defense mechanisms. For example, merely purchasing more incoming bandwidth than the current volume of the attack might not help, because the attacker might be able to simply add more attack machines. This after all will end up completely crashing a website for periods of time.

Malware can carry DDoS attack mechanisms; one of the better-known examples of this was MyDoom. Its DoS mechanism was triggered on a specific date and time. This type of DDoS involved hardcoding the target IP address prior to release of the malware and no further interaction was necessary to launch the attack.

A system may also be compromised with a trojan, allowing the attacker to download a zombie agent, or the trojan may contain one. Attackers can also break into systems using automated tools that exploit flaws in programs that listen for connections from remote hosts. This scenario primarily concerns systems acting as servers on the web. Stacheldraht is a classic example of a DDoS tool. It utilizes a layered structure where the attacker uses a client program to connect to handlers, which are compromised systems that issue commands to the zombie agents, which in turn facilitate the DDoS attack. Agents are compromised via the handlers by the attacker, using automated routines to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that accept remote connections running on the targeted remote hosts. Each handler can control up to a thousand agents. In some cases a machine may become part of a DDoS attack with the owner's consent, for example, in Operation Payback, organized by the group Anonymous. These attacks can use different types of internet packets such as: TCP, UDP, ICMP etc.

These collections of systems compromisers are known as botnets. DDoS tools like Stacheldraht still use classic DoS attack methods centered on IP spoofing and amplification like smurf attacks and fraggle attacks (these are also known as bandwidth consumption attacks). SYN floods (also known as resource starvation attacks) may also be used. Newer tools can use DNS servers for DoS purposes. Unlike MyDoom's DDoS mechanism, botnets can be turned against any IP address. Script kiddies use them to deny the availability of well known websites to legitimate users. More sophisticated attackers use DDoS tools for the purposes of extortion – even against their business rivals.

Simple attacks such as SYN floods may appear with a wide range of source IP addresses, giving the appearance of a well distributed DoS. These flood attacks do not require completion of the TCP three way handshake and attempt to exhaust the destination SYN queue or the server bandwidth. Because the source IP addresses can be trivially spoofed, an attack could come from a limited set of sources, or may even originate from a single host. Stack enhancements such as syn cookies may be effective mitigation against SYN queue flooding, however complete bandwidth exhaustion may require involvement.

If an attacker mounts an attack from a single host it would be classified as a DoS attack. In fact, any attack against availability would be classed as a denial-of-service attack. On the other hand, if an attacker uses many systems to simultaneously launch attacks against a remote host, this would be classified as a DDoS attack.

UK's GCHQ has tools built for DDOS, named PREDATORS FACE and ROLLING THUNDER.

Reflected / spoofed attack

A distributed denial-of-service attack may involve sending forged requests of some type to a very large number of computers that will reply to the requests. Using Internet Protocol address spoofing, the source address is set to that of the targeted victim, which means all the replies will go to (and flood) the target. (This reflected attack form is sometimes called a "DRDOS".)

ICMP Echo Request attacks (Smurf Attack) can be considered one form of reflected attack, as the flooding host(s) send Echo Requests to the broadcast addresses of mis-configured networks, thereby enticing hosts to send Echo Reply packets to the victim. Some early DDoS programs implemented a distributed form of this attack.

Many services can be exploited to act as reflectors, some harder to block than others. US-CERT have observed that different services implies in different amplification factors, as you can see below:

UDP-based Amplification Attacks

Protocol	Bandwidth Amplification Factor
NTP	556.9
CharGen	358.8
DNS	up to 179
QOTD	140.3
Quake Network Protocol	63.9
BitTorrent	4.0 - 54.3
SSDP	30.8
Kad	16.3
SNMPv2	6.3
Steam Protocol	5.5
NetBIOS	3.8

DNS amplification attacks involve a new mechanism that increased the amplification effect, using a much larger list of DNS servers than seen earlier. SNMP and NTP can also be exploited as reflector in an amplification attack.

Telephony denial-of-service (TDoS)

Voice over IP has made abusive origination of large numbers of telephone voice calls inexpensive and readily automated while permitting call origins to be misrepresented through caller ID spoofing.

According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, telephony denial-of-service (TDoS) has appeared as part of various fraudulent schemes:

A scammer contacts the victim's banker or broker, impersonating the victim to request a funds transfer. The banker's attempt to contact the victim for verification of the transfer fails as the victim's telephone lines are being flooded with thousands of bogus calls, rendering the victim unreachable.
A scammer contacts consumers with a bogus claim to collect an outstanding payday loan for thousands of dollars. When the consumer objects, the scammer retaliates by flooding the victim's employer with thousands of automated calls. In some cases, displayed caller ID is spoofed to impersonate police or law enforcement agencies.
A scammer contacts consumers with a bogus debt collection demand and threatens to send police; when the victim balks, the scammer floods local police numbers with calls on which caller ID is spoofed to display the victims number. Police soon arrive at the victim's residence attempting to find the origin of the calls.

Telephony denial-of-service can exist even without Internet telephony. In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, telemarketers were used to flood political opponents with spurious calls to jam phone banks on election day. Widespread publication of a number can also flood it with enough calls to render it unusable, as happened with multiple +1-area code-867-5309 subscribers inundated by hundreds of misdialed calls daily in response to a popular song 867-5309/Jenny.

TDoS differs from other telephone harassment (such as prank calls and obscene phone calls) by the number of calls originated; by occupying lines continuously with repeated automated calls, the victim is prevented from making or receiving both routine and emergency telephone calls.

Related exploits include SMS flooding attacks and black fax or fax loop transmission.

Denial-of-service Level II

The goal of DoS L2 (possibly DDoS) attack is to cause a launching of a defense mechanism which blocks the network segment from which the attack originated. In case of distributed attack or IP header modification (that depends on the kind of security behavior) it will fully block the attacked network from the Internet, but without system crash.

Advanced Persistent DoS (APDoS)

An APDoS is more likely to be perpetrated by an advanced persistent threat (APT): actors who are well resourced, exceptionally skilled and have access to substantial commercial grade computer resources and capacity. APDoS attacks represent a clear and emerging threat needing specialised monitoring and incident response services and the defensive capabilities of specialised DDoS mitigation service providers. This type of attack involves massive network layer DDoS attacks through to focused application layer (HTTP) floods, followed by repeated (at varying intervals) SQLI and XSS attacks. Typically, the perpetrators can simultaneously use from 2 to 5 attack vectors involving up to several tens of millions of requests per second, often accompanied by large SYN floods that can not only attack the victim but also any service provider implementing any sort of managed DDoS mitigation capability. These attacks can persist for several weeks- the longest continuous period noted so far lasted 38 days. This APDoS attack involved approximately 50+ petabits (51,000+ terabits) of malicious traffic. Attackers in this scenario may (or often will) tactically switch between several targets to create a diversion to evade defensive DDoS countermeasures but all the while eventually concentrating the main thrust of the attack onto a single victim. In this scenario, threat actors with continuous access to several very powerful network resources are capable of sustaining a prolonged campaign generating enormous levels of un-amplified DDoS traffic.

APDoS attacks are characterised by:

Advanced reconnaissance (pre-attack OSINT and extensive decoyed scanning crafted to evade detection over long periods)
Tactical execution (attack with a primary and secondary victims but focus is on Primary)
Explicit motivation (a calculated end game/goal target)
Large computing capacity (access to substantial computer power and network bandwidth resources)
Simultaneous multi-threaded ISO layer attacks (sophisticated tools operating at layers 3 through 7)
Persistence over extended periods (utilising all the above into a concerted, well managed attack across a range of targets)

DDoS Extortion

In 2015, DDoS botnets such as DD4BC grew in prominence, taking aim at financial institutions. Cyber-extortionists typically begin with a low-level attack and a warning that a larger attack will be carried out if a ransom is not paid in Bitcoin. Security experts recommend targeted websites to not pay the ransom.

Attack tools

A wide array of programs are used to launch DoS-attacks.

In cases such as MyDoom the tools are embedded in malware, and launch their attacks without the knowledge of the system owner. Stacheldraht is a classic example of a DDoS tool. It utilizes a layered structure where the attacker uses a client program to connect to handlers, which are compromised systems that issue commands to the zombie agents, which in turn facilitate the DDoS attack. Agents are compromised via the handlers by the attacker, using automated routines to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that accept remote connections running on the targeted remote hosts. Each handler can control up to a thousand agents.

In other cases a machine may become part of a DDoS attack with the owner's consent, for example, in Operation Payback, organized by the group Anonymous. The LOIC has typically been used in this way.

UK's GCHQ has tools built for DDOS, named PREDATORS FACE and ROLLING THUNDER.

Defense techniques

Defensive responses to denial-of-service attacks typically involve the use of a combination of attack detection, traffic classification and response tools, aiming to block traffic that they identify as illegitimate and allow traffic that they identify as legitimate.

A list of prevention and response tools is provided below:

Firewalls

In the case of a simple attack, a firewall could have a simple rule added to deny all incoming traffic from the attackers, based on protocols, ports or the originating IP addresses.

More complex attacks will however be hard to block with simple rules: for example, if there is an ongoing attack on port 80 (web service), it is not possible to drop all incoming traffic on this port because doing so will prevent the server from serving legitimate traffic. Additionally, firewalls may be too deep in the network hierarchy, with routers being adversely affected before the traffic gets to the firewall.

Switches

Most switches have some rate-limiting and ACL capability. Some switches provide automatic and/or system-wide rate limiting, traffic shaping, delayed binding (TCP splicing), deep packet inspection and Bogon filtering (bogus IP filtering) to detect and remediate denial-of-service attacks through automatic rate filtering and WAN Link failover and balancing.

These schemes will work as long as the DoS attacks can be prevented by using them. For example, SYN flood can be prevented using delayed binding or TCP splicing. Similarly content based DoS may be prevented using deep packet inspection. Attacks originating from dark addresses or going to dark addresses can be prevented using bogon filtering. Automatic rate filtering can work as long as set rate-thresholds have been set correctly and granularly. Wan-link failover will work as long as both links have DoS/DDoS prevention mechanism.

Routers

Similar to switches, routers have some rate-limiting and ACL capability. They, too, are manually set. Most routers can be easily overwhelmed under a DoS attack. Cisco IOS has optional features that can reduce the impact of flooding.

Application front end hardware

Application front end hardware is intelligent hardware placed on the network before traffic reaches the servers. It can be used on networks in conjunction with routers and switches. Application front end hardware analyzes data packets as they enter the system, and then identifies them as priority, regular, or dangerous. There are more than 25 bandwidth management vendors.

Application level Key Completion Indicators

In order to meet the case of application level DDoS attacks against Cloud based applications, approaches may be based on an application layer analysis, to indicate whether an incoming traffic bulk is legitimate or not and thus enable the triggering of elasticity decisions without the economical implications of a DDoS attack. These approaches mainly rely on an identified path of value inside the application and monitor the macroscopic progress of the requests in this path, towards the final generation of profit, through markers denoted as Key Completion Indicators

IPS based prevention

Intrusion-prevention systems (IPS) are effective if the attacks have signatures associated with them. However, the trend among the attacks is to have legitimate content but bad intent. Intrusion-prevention systems which work on content recognition cannot block behavior-based DoS attacks.

An ASIC based IPS may detect and block denial-of-service attacks because they have the processing power and the granularity to analyze the attacks and act like a circuit breaker in an automated way.

A rate-based IPS (RBIPS) must analyze traffic granularly and continuously monitor the traffic pattern and determine if there is traffic anomaly. It must let the legitimate traffic flow while blocking the DoS attack traffic.

DDS based defense

More focused on the problem than IPS, a DoS Defense System (DDS) can block connection-based DoS attacks and those with legitimate content but bad intent. A DDS can also address both protocol attacks (such as Teardrop and Ping of death) and rate-based attacks (such as ICMP floods and SYN floods).

Blackholing and sinkholing

With blackholing, all the traffic to the attacked DNS or IP address is sent to a "black hole" (null interface or a non-existent server). To be more efficient and avoid affecting network connectivity, it can be managed by the ISP.

Sinkholing routes traffic to a valid IP address which analyzes traffic and rejects bad packets. Sinkholing is not efficient for most severe attacks.

Clean pipes

All traffic is passed through a "cleaning center" or a "scrubbing center" via various methods such as proxies, tunnels or even direct circuits, which separates "bad" traffic (DDoS and also other common internet attacks) and only sends good traffic beyond to the server. The provider needs central connectivity to the Internet to manage this kind of service unless they happen to be located within the same facility as the "cleaning center" or "scrubbing center".

Examples of providers of this service:

A10 Networks
Arbor Networks
AT&T
F5 Networks
Incapsula
Neustar Inc
Prolexic Technologies
Sprint
Staminus Communications
Tata Communications
Verisign
Verizon

Unintentional denial-of-service

An Unintentional denial-of-service can occur when a system ends up denied, not due to a deliberate attack by a single individual or group of individuals, but simply due to a sudden enormous spike in popularity. This can happen when an extremely popular website posts a prominent link to a second, less well-prepared site, for example, as part of a news story. The result is that a significant proportion of the primary site's regular users – potentially hundreds of thousands of people – click that link in the space of a few hours, having the same effect on the target website as a DDoS attack. A VIPDoS is the same, but specifically when the link was posted by a celebrity.

When Michael Jackson died in 2009, websites such as Google and Twitter slowed down or even crashed. Many sites' servers thought the requests were from a virus or spyware trying to cause a denial-of-service attack, warning users that their queries looked like "automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

News sites and link sites – sites whose primary function is to provide links to interesting content elsewhere on the Internet – are most likely to cause this phenomenon. The canonical example is the Slashdot effect when receiving traffic from Slashdot. Sites such as Reddit, Digg, the Drudge Report, Fark, Something Awful, and the webcomic Penny Arcade have their own corresponding "effects", known as "the Reddit hug of death", "the Digg effect", being "drudged", "farking", "goonrushing" and "wanging"; respectively.

Routers have also been known to create unintentional DoS attacks, as both D-Link and Netgear routers have created NTP vandalism by flooding NTP servers without respecting the restrictions of client types or geographical limitations.

Similar unintentional denials-of-service can also occur via other media, e.g. when a URL is mentioned on television. If a server is being indexed by Google or another search engine during peak periods of activity, or does not have a lot of available bandwidth while being indexed, it can also experience the effects of a DoS attack.

Legal action has been taken in at least one such case. In 2006, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation sued YouTube: massive numbers of would-be youtube.com users accidentally typed the tube company's URL, utube.com. As a result, the tube company ended up having to spend large amounts of money on upgrading their bandwidth. The company appears to have taken advantage of the situation, with utube.com now containing ads for advertisement revenue.

In March 2014, after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, DigitalGlobe launched a crowdsourcing service on which users could help search for the missing jet in satellite images. The response overwhelmed the company's servers.

An unintentional denial-of-service may also result from a prescheduled event created by the website itself. This could be caused when a server provides some service at a specific time. This might be a university website setting the grades to be available where it will result in many more login requests at that time than any other.

Side effects of attacks

Backscatter

See also: Backscatter (email) and Internet background noise

In computer network security, backscatter is a side-effect of a spoofed denial-of-service attack. In this kind of attack, the attacker spoofs (or forges) the source address in IP packets sent to the victim. In general, the victim machine cannot distinguish between the spoofed packets and legitimate packets, so the victim responds to the spoofed packets as it normally would. These response packets are known as backscatter.

If the attacker is spoofing source addresses randomly, the backscatter response packets from the victim will be sent back to random destinations. This effect can be used by network telescopes as indirect evidence of such attacks.

The term "backscatter analysis" refers to observing backscatter packets arriving at a statistically significant portion of the IP address space to determine characteristics of DoS attacks and victims.