New Denial-of-Service Attack Is a Killer

ancientribe writes "Hacker RSnake blogs about a newly discovered and deadly denial-of-service attack that could well be the next big threat to the Internet as a whole. It goes after a broadband Internet connection and KOs machines on the other end such that they stay offline even after the attack is over. It spans various systems, too: the pair of Swedish researchers who found it have already contacted firewall, operating system, and Web-enabled device vendors whose products are vulnerable to this attack." Listen to the interview (MP3) — English starts a few minutes in — and you might find yourself convinced that we have a problem. The researchers claim that they have been able to take down every system with a TCP/IP stack that they have attempted; and they know of no fix or workaround.

Comments

I cant believe this is the first comment,

[Aliks]

Some DOS attack on Slashdot in progress?

Re:I cant believe this is the first comment,

[neokushan]

Yeah, some stupid user deltree'd the whole site!

Re:I cant believe this is the first comment,

[Sj0]

Ah, there's your problem, you're runnning your website on MS-DOS 6.22!

This is a bit unorthodox, but might I suggest...linux?

Re:I cant believe this is the first comment,

[mcgrew]

No, it's my fault. I linked to slashdot from slashdot, slashdotting slashdot. So slashdot's slashdotted.

Sorry.

Re:I cant believe this is the first comment,

[neokushan]

AHAHAHAHAHA! You left your system open to hacking! HAHAHAHA! Look at all this animal porn you have! HAHAHA I'm deleting your OS's Kernel right n

Pfffft

[MyLongNickName]

Doesn't affect me. I haven't used DOS in YEARS. Some folks need to move up to Windows 3.1. That is where it is at.

Re:Pfffft

[eserteric]

Uhh, you know that's still based on DOS right? You should update to Windows 95 like me to be safe.

Re:Pfffft

[ByOhTek]

Bah. I use Dr. Dos. It's a doctor so it fixes itself and I don't have to worry about these issues!

Re:Pfffft

[Remloc]

Nope, NT 3.1 circa '93. We were an early adopter on a currently top of the line Pentium (1)--50 MHz, I believe. Thing would BSOD if you more than looked at it funny.

Re:Pfffft

[Uncle Rummy]

You see, if you keep the mouse moving while typing (ie. just jiggle it back and forth with one hand while typing with the other), for some reason the system was able to keep up with the typing.

Aha! Now I get all those jokes about typing one-handed. Thanks!

Re:Go for it, take on my machine!

[BenoitRen]

Thief! That's MY address!

Nah

[Twinbee]

Ignore the story, there's very little chance that a single virus can take down all systems, especially if the user is not running Windows.

I for instance have multiple rock solid software and hardware firewalls, and most ports blocked - I'd like to see it try taking dow

pff

[amnezick]

Typical /. reaction to potential danger:

"Hah. Until I don't taste nuclear winter snow I don't believe that's gonna happen'"

Give the man his nuke. He earned it.

Re:fearmongering

[Cro Magnon]

(this having to wait 5 minutes between posts is a pain in the ass. Anyone else stuck with this restriction?)

My sig answers your question. :)

Idea! Burn the WITCHES !!

[Anonymous Coward]

These are not RESEARCHERS but wicked WITCHES. Burn them!! Burn the wicked witches!!

I'm safe

[goddidit]

This doesn't me since use I UDP all communications communications for.

Re:DON'T PANIC!

[Tanktalus]

Apparently, I should panic:

# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
cat: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies: No such file or directory
# echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
bash: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies: No such file or directory

I CAN'T TURN IT OFF!

(Manually-built kernels FTW!:

$ gunzip -c /proc/config.gz | grep -i syn.*cook
# CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES is not set

)

Re:The sky is falling!

[dbIII]

It shows the TCP/IP stack a video tape. After that there is nothing you can do.

Re:Transcript

[Twisted64]

I have a program which does transcription of podcasts for me. Here ya go:

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer [transcription ended (kill)]

You know what? Forget it.

WOOT! Narrowband (tm) rules!

[doc_doofus]

It goes after a broadband Internet connection

Ha, ha, laugh at my dial-up connection now!

Re:The sky is falling!

[jcuervo]

Seven megabitsssssss...

Re:DON'T PANIC!

[shrikel]

Oh no, me too!!

C:\Documents and Settings\Adam>cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
'cat' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:fearmongering

[KillerBob]

Yeah, it would be nice if nobody crapflooded /. ever, so they didn't have to come up with such restrictions...

they'd also have to fire some of the editors to get rid of all the crap that gets posted here, though...

Lose

[AliasMarlowe]

I renamed the win.com file in Windows 3.x to be lose.com instead. Then you got the esthetically satisfying possibility:

C>win
Bad command or file name
C>lose
Starting Microsoft Windows

Then again, I was already sick of Windows at 3.0, having tried Windows 1, Windows 2, Windows 286, and Windows 386, and hated them all for being so stupid and unreliable. The first version of Windows that I almost liked was the one in OS/2 2.0, because you could run several instances of them and kill them if they didn't actually kill themselves.

Incidentally, the shareware graphical shell Aporia gave a sort of Windows 95 look to Windows 386 in the late 1980s (before Windows 3.0). It had icons for tools, drag+drop worked, there was a trashcan, and so forth. I wonder what happened to it...