Which of these countermeasures against a SYN flood attack depends on a challenge-and-response mechanism in which the initiating host is required to send a cryptographic hash that matches some expected value of the receiving host?

Question

Computers & Technology

Kenneth Boone

8 December, 22:16

Which of these countermeasures against a SYN flood attack depends on a challenge-and-response mechanism in which the initiating host is required to send a cryptographic hash that matches some expected value of the receiving host?

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Gemma Clay · Answer 1

SYN flood attack

Explanation:

TCP SYN flood is a type of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that exploits part of the normal TCP three-way handshake to consume resources on the targeted server and render it unresponsive.

Essentially, with SYN flood DDoS, the offender sends TCP connection requests faster than the targeted machine can process them, causing network saturation.

When a client and server establish a normal TCP "three-way handshake," the exchange looks like this:

Client requests connection by sending SYN (synchronize) message to the server. Server acknowledges by sending SYN-ACK (synchronize-acknowledge) message back to the client. Client responds with an ACK (acknowledge) message, and the connection is established.

In a SYN flood attack, the attacker sends repeated SYN packets to every port on the targeted server, often using a fake IP address. The server, unaware of the attack, receives multiple, apparently legitimate requests to establish communication. It responds to each attempt with a SYN-ACK packet from each open port.

The malicious client either does not send the expected ACK, or-if the IP address is spoofed-never receives the SYN-ACK in the first place. Either way, the server under attack will wait for acknowledgement of its SYN-ACK packet for some time.