Is there a line of defense against Distributed Reflective attacks?

Sun Jan 19 04:16:59 UTC 2003

In message <Pine.GSO.4.44.0301182004040.16112-100000 at clifden.donelan.com>, Sean
 Donelan writes:
>
>On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>> theory, trace a single packet.  But the real problem with either idea
>> is this:  suppose that you know, unambiguously and unequivocally, that
>> 750 zombies are attacking you.  What do you do with that information?
>
>The reality is its not 750 zombies, its generally one person controlling
>750 zombies attacking you.

Right -- and neither itrace nor hash-based tracing are going to solve 
that:
>

>   3) Find and convict the true attacker

Hash-based trace might help on that, *if* there was recording of the 
packets to the zombies.  But doing that ubiquitously might -- would? -- 
turn the Internet into a surveillance state.
>

>   2) Track and stop DDOS quickly when it does happen

That's the point of pushback.

>So how do we
>   1) Make end-user systems less vulnerable to being compromised

That's my real goal...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)