UDP port 80 DDoS attack

Dobbins, Roland rdobbins at arbor.net
Wed Feb 8 08:29:31 UTC 2012


On Feb 8, 2012, at 2:56 PM, bas wrote:

> The big drawback with S/RTBH is that it is a DoS method in itself.

I'm not an advocate of *automated* S/RTBH, and I am an advocate of whitelisting various well-known 'golden networks/IPs' via prefix-lists in order to avoid this issue in part; also, note that the concept of partial service recovery incorporates the notion of some legitimate traffic/users being blocked in order to maintain the availability of the targeted server/service/application for the majority of legitimate traffic/users. 

Also note that S/RTBH isn't a universal panacea; it's just one tool in the toolbox.  flowspec is more flexible due to its layer-4 granularity; and other types of tools such as IDMS are even more flexible and incorporate much richer classification technology.

It's important to understand that this isn't a theoretical discussion - I've personally utilized/helped others to utilize S/RTBH to successfully mitigate large-scale DDoS attacks, and it's a lowest-common-denominator in terms of a somewhat dynamic mitigation mechanism.  Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the merely good.

;>

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Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

	  Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

		       -- John Milton





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