Hi,
as around 40% of ASNs allow at least partial IPv4 address spoofing in
their network(http://spoofer.csail.mit.edu/summary.php) and there are
around 30 million open-resolvers(http://openresolverproject.org/) in
the Internet, then DNS amplification traffic is daily occasion for
ISPs. This in probably mainly because RPF checks and DNS
RRL(https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01000/0/A-Quick-Introduction-to-Response-Rate-Limiting.html)
are not ubiquitously implemented, recursive requests without any ACLs
in DNS servers are often allowed, it requires little effort from
attackers point of view and is effective attack method. Unfortunately,
there seems to be very limited number of countermeasures for ISPs. Few
which I can think of:
1) higher capacity backbone links - I'm not sure if this can be
considered a mitigation method, but at least it can help to affect
smaller amount of customers if traffic volumes are not very high
2) rate-limit incoming DNS traffic flows on peering and uplink ports -
here I mean something similar to iptables "recent"
module(http://www.netfilter.org/documentation/HOWTO/netfilter-extensions-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.16)
which allows certain number of certain type of packets in a configured
time-slot per IP. However, such functionality is probably not common
on edge or backbone routers.
Tracking the packet state does definitely not work because state table
should be synchronized between all the routers in the network and
again, this requires Internet-routers to have stateful firewall
functionality. In addition, one also needs to allow new DNS
connections from Internet to its network.
If one simply polices incoming DNS traffic on uplink and peering
ports(for example if baseline DNS traffic is 5Mbps, then policer is
set to 50Mbps), then legitimate customers DNS traffic is also affected
in case of actual attack occurs and policer starts to drop DNS
traffic, i.e. policer has no way to distinguish between the legitimate
and non-legitimate incoming DNS traffic.
Am I wrong in some points? What are the common practices to mitigate
DNS amplification attacks in ISP network?
thanks,
Martin
Situationally-appropriate network access policies instantiated as ACLs on hardware-based routers/layer-3 switches in IDCs, on customer aggregation routers, in mitigation centers, etc.
S/RTBH.
flowspec.
IDMS (full disclosure, I work for a vendor of such systems).
See this .pdf preso:
<https://app.box.com/s/r7an1moswtc7ce58f8gg>
Statefulness is out, as you indicate.
QoS is out, as you indicated (e.g., legitimate traffic is 'crowded out' by programmatically-generated attack traffic).
The real solution to this entire problem set is source-address validation, as you indicate. Until the happy day when we've achieved universal source-address validation arrives, various combinations of the above.
I forgot to mention RRL on authoritative servers, apologies.
Martin-
I represent a statewide educational network running Juniper gear that is a quasi-enterprise. I think efforts depend on size and type of network. We are testing an approach that involves;
1) whitelisting known local resolvers, well behaved cloud DNS resolvers.
2) on ingress, policing non-conforming traffic that matches UDP src port 53 dst port unreserved bytes > 1400
3) on ingress, queuing fragments to high packet loss priority [you better understand how fragments are used in your network before doing this]
4) If you have Juniper gear look into prefix-action
5) RTBH if required
This obviously doesn't work on the core of the internet.
Other good tips:
* strengthen [anycast] your local DNS resolvers and consider a scheme that allows you to change their outgoing address on the fly.
* push [some] of your external authoritative DNS to the cloud.
-Michael
Hi Martin,
You seem to be focused on DNS amplification from the perspective of
the attack's target. To the target, it's just another DDOS attack. As
with other DDOS attacks, you reroute the contained /24 to a DDOS
mitigator who specializes in removing unwanted packets from the data
stream and passing the rest to your network via a tunnel. The
mitigator writes custom software on expensive server arrays which
figure out the attack de jour signatures and scrub the packet flows.
Some folks rate-limit UDP flows. This just kills everything sooner
during an attack since you kinda need DNS to work.
Rate limiting by source turns your DNS requests stateful... a happy
fun way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Really, your best bet is to treat it as just another DDOS and let the
guy you pay for DDOS service handle the details.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Deploy DNS COOKIES. This allows legitimate UDP traffic to be
identified and treated differently to spoofed traffic by providing
the equivalent to a TCP handshake but over UDP.
This is currently in IETF last call but the code points are assigned
and implementations are available. Ask your nameserver vendor for
this today. Ask your OS vendor for support.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsop-cookies-07
Mark
Hi,
depends on the type of ISP you are and the bandwidth used in the attack.
If most attacks are targeted for www.example.com then you could design
your net so that www.example.com is just a TCP service VIP that never
needs any UDP. This would make it possible to place simple ACL on your
edge to get rid of most stuff.
Yes there are people that know how to correctly DDOS but most just
give up after there attack traffic never affects the service.
If the bandwidth exceeds your transit/peering capacity you need to
filter/blackhole it upstream. You can also isolate the prefix under
attack to a single transit or a DDOS mitigation service to prevent the
other prefixes from being impacted.
Other useful stuff is a flow based traffic analysis tool to get
details about the attack.
Karsten
flowspec.
Probably the best method if you have competent engineers and uplinks who can give you bgp flowspec.
Makes bandwitdh attacks amusing instead of annoying.