R3204P16-HP Load Balancing Module Security Configuration Guide-6PW101

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Attack t
yp
e Descri
p
tion
SYN Flood
A SYN flood attack exploits TCP SYN packets. Due to resource limitation, the number
of TCP connections that can be created on a device is limited. A SYN flood attacker
sends a barrage of spurious SYN packets to a victim to initiate TCP connections. As the
SYN_ACK packets that the victim sends in response can never get acknowledgments,
large amounts of half-open connections are created and retained on the victim, making
the victim inaccessible before the number of half-open connections drops to a
reasonable level due to timeout of half-open connections. In this way, a SYN flood
attack exhausts system resources such as memory on a system whose implementation
does not limit creation of connections.
ICMP Flood
An ICMP flood attack overwhelms the victim with an enormous number of ICMP echo
requests (such as ping packets) in a short period, preventing the victim from providing
services normally.
UDP Flood
A UDP flood attack overwhelms the victim with an enormous number of UDP packets in
a short period, disabling the victim from providing services normally.
Number of
connections per
source IP exceeds the
threshold
When an internal user initiates a large number of connections to a host on the external
network in a short period of time, system resources on the device will be used up soon.
This will make the device unable to service other users.
Number of
connections per dest
IP exceeds the
threshold
If an internal server receives large quantities of connection requests in a short period of
time, the server will not be able to process normal connection requests from other hosts.