New DoS Attack

[westin]

I saw this on slashdot. It is a pretty interesting read. Lets hope they can find some way to block the attack before every script kiddie on the planet has a tool to perform this attack.

Robert and Jack are smart dudes. I've known them for years, and they've always been one step ahead of the game. A couple of years ago, Jack found some anomalies in which machines would stop working in some very specific circumstances while being scanned. A few experiments, tons of reading through documentation, and one mysteriously named tool called "sockstress" later, and the two are now touting a nearly universal denial-of-service (DoS) attack that can be performed on almost any normal broadband Internet connection -- in just a few seconds.

How bad is it? Well, in an interview --- (fast-forward five minutes in to hear it in English), the two were asked if they could take out a data center. While they've never tried, it appears to be a totally plausible attack. Worse yet, unlike most DoS attacks, the machines often do not come back online once the attack is over. The victim system just doesn’t respond any more. Great, huh?

Full article:

http://www.darkreading.com/blog.asp?...T.svl=tease2_2

[Syini666]

Not much of a suprise; could be smoke or legit, when keeping such a tight lid on matters its kind of hard to discern which it is. I would like to think that vendors will fix this issue before it becomes a problem in the wild but we all know how lax some outfits are at patching known bugs, even when being actively exploited in the wild.

[morganlefay]

Actually reading the whole article...they are unsure of the affect on the whole system....all devices down the line....not just the target

Robert and I talk a lot, and I asked him if he'd be willing to DoS us, and he flatly said, "Unfortunately, it may affect other devices between here and there so it's not really a good idea."

MLF

[westin]

Actually reading the whole article...they are unsure of the affect on the whole system....all devices down the line.




MLF

That kind of disturbed me as well. It almost makes it sound like this could affect the entire infrastructure...