A potential DoS attack against network firewalls

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" A potential DoS attack against network firewalls "
Karim Asif Sattar

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	54439
Doc. No	:	TL24393
Call number	:	‭1460316‬
Main Entry	:	Karim Asif Sattar
Title & Author	:	A potential DoS attack against network firewalls\ Karim Asif Sattar
College	:	King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Saudi Arabia)
Date	:	2008
Degree	:	M.S.
student score	:	2008
Page No	:	99
Abstract	:	A firewall of an enterprise network is typically the first line of defense against Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks. A firewall itself can also become a target of these attacks. If the firewall is compromised then the whole network becomes open for further attacks. In this research work, we identify a stealth DoS attack that targets the last-matching rules of the security policy of a firewall. The last-matching rules are those rules that are located at the bottom of the ruleset of a firewall's security policy, and would require the most processing time by the firewall. If these rules are discovered, an attacker can subsequently launch an effective low-rate DoS attack to trigger the worst-case or near worst-case processing, and thereby overwhelming the firewall and bringing it to its knees. As a proof of concept, we present and implement an intelligent probing technique to remotely discover the last-matching rules of a firewall using the Linux Netfilter. We study experimentally the effectiveness of this probing technique taking into account important factors such as the firewall's motherboard architecture and load conditions at the network links and hosts. In addition, we examine the impact of launching a low-rate DoS attack on the firewall's performance The performance is studied in terms of the firewall's CPU utilization, throughput, packet loss, and latency.
Subject	:	Applied sciences; Computer science; 0984:Computer science
Added Entry	:	King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Saudi Arabia)