[atlarge-discuss] Re: [ga] [Root Server] DDoS Attack: What The Media Did Not Tell You

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Joe and all assembly members, stakeholders or other interested parties,

  Thank you Joe for providing this article to yet further verify what many
of us, yourself taking the lead some years ago now, that the DNS, BGP
and especially BIND have been vulnerable to hacking attacks to include
DDOS attacks.  It is still a wonder to me as I am sure it is yourself
and others, that ICANN did not pay attention to many including
yourself, myself, the ORSC, Sans, and others that the ICANN staff
and BoD did not take heed several years ago now.

Joe Baptista wrote:

> Original story indexed at:
>
> URL: http://www.circleid.com/articles/2553.asp
>
> DDoS Attack: What The Media Did Not Tell You
> November 20, 2002  |  By Joe Baptista
>
> On Monday, October 21, a "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attack
> struck 9 out of the 13 root servers operated by a number of contractors on
> behalf of the United States Department of Commerce (USG). The next day,
> the Washington Post reported, "The heart of the Internet sustained its
> largest and most sophisticated attack ever."
>
> This claim was only partially true. The classic hacker attack was indeed
> the largest ever witnessed in 20 years of root history -- in fact, it was
> the first attack against the roots.
>
> But claims that the attack was "sophisticated" were bogus. Most network
> operators were of the opinion that the attack showed a serious ignorance
> of the domain name system (DNS) and general network operations. A great
> deal more damage could have been done if the individuals responsible had
> targeted the DNS directly. At worst the attack was a test or probe for a
> potential future attack.
>
> The root servers struck by the attack assist computers in translating
> Internet domain names, such as www.circleid.com, to numeric equivalents
> used by computers. These servers provide the primary roadmap for 70% of
> all Internet communications. The remaining 30% of the net now uses
> competing root service providers who bypass the USG root system. They were
> not under attack.
>
> According to statements by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
> director Robert Mueller, the incident lasted about an hour and originated
> from computers in the United States and Korea. Most often, computers used
> in the DDOS assaults are commandeered by hackers either manually or
> remotely with the help of automated software tools that scan millions of
> computers for known security holes. These computers often belong to
> unsuspecting home users. An FBI spokesperson confirmed that the incident
> was still under investigation.
>
> Fortunately, despite its size, the attack had no impact on the Internet,
> and no users or computers were affected. The USG root server system
> contains only 258 top-level domains, of which 243 are ccTLDs (country code
> top-level domains) and the rest are generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like
> .com, .org and .net. In comparison to many Internet root server systems,
> the USG is the smallest. As a result of its limited size, most of the
> information contained in that root is cached by Internet Service
> Providers (ISPs) and refreshed every 48 hours. Under those circumstances,
> Internet users would not have noticed the one-hour attack even if all 13
> roots had been successfully blocked the entire time. There simply was not
> enough time for the cache records at ISPs to expire long enough for anyone
> to notice.
>
> Petri Helenius was one of the first people to witness and report the
> attack in progress. He notified the networking community that the DDOS
> attack was not "causing any serious operational problems" but was slowing
> things down. Helenius is a telecommunications expert whose company
> developed the ROMmon (Robust Online Metric MONitoring) system that alerted
> Mr. Helenius to the intrusion. Helenius notified the North American
> Network Operators' Group (NANOG) by email at 21:29 UTC. "I remember
> spending some time before sending off the email," said Helenius. "And,
> trying to figure out specifics and failing to get further, I sent the
> email."
>
> The alarms went off at ROMmon at 20:46 (UTC) and the threshold for
> escalation was crossed at 20:49. The situation dropped "below radar" at
> 22:01. Helenius pointed out, "the timestamp is a little later than the
> fact (attack) due to the averaging of the system that (ROMmon) does before
> it's happy."
>
> Paul Vixie, a root operator, confirmed to NANOG that the DDOS attack was
> an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) request. ICMP messages are
> used in the processing of datagrams through which Internet systems
> communicate. This was the first clue to network operators that the people
> behind the attack had no clue as to how to effectively take out the roots.
> If the attackers had focused their computer power on generating bogus
> queries to port 53, used by roots to provide domain name service, the
> attack might have been successful -- provided that it was sustained for
> more than one hour. Vixie successfully blocked the DDOS traffic he was
> getting with the assistance of his backbone providers. Other operators,
> however, were not as successful in defending their systems against the
> attack.
>
> If the attackers had instead targeted the much larger databases used by
> the .com servers, users would have noticed the incident and it could have
> gotten ugly. The .com domain servers operated by VeriSign contain millions
> of domain names, and are queried more often than the roots. If this had
> been the scenario, the one-hour attack would have had significant
> repercussions and most of the Internet would have been unreachable,
> though it was reported on NANOG that the primary root server operated by
> VeriSign had been unreachable at times during the DDOS attack. Still,
> there are lots of clues here that the attackers had computer power behind
> them but did not take full advantage of it. If the attackers had wanted
> the world to notice, they should have attacked the .com servers. Or maybe
> it was just a warning, as some have speculated.
>
> The month of October has seen a number of possible attacks against the
> roots, and this may not have been the first one. CAIDA, the Cooperative
> Association for Internet Data Analysis, has been monitoring the
> performance of root and gTLD servers since January 2002, using passive
> monitors located at the University of California in San Diego and in San
> Jose. Their report on the DDOS attack indicates that "unusual behavior"
> in the roots was detected as early as October 7. The report suggests that
> a series of probes in October preceded the attack.
>
> Speculation by officials that the attack was a warning may be credible
> under these circumstances. As attacks go, this one was a failure: no one
> except the experts noticed. Thus, it could have been a short test to see
> how the system responded. Expect more incidents like these in future.
>
> The attack, however, should come as no surprise to ICANN (Internet
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the Department of Commerce
> contractor responsible for root security. Over the years, ICANN has been
> warned that the existing root infrastructure was vulnerable to attack, but
> the warnings have been largely ignored. Now, however, ICANN President
> Louis Touton insists that the attacks "make it important to have increased
> focus on the need for security and stability of the Internet." ICANN's
> Security and Stability Advisory Committee quickly moved in to investigate
> the incident. The committee is expected to produce a report on securing
> the edge of the USG Domain Name System network.
>
> Informed sources at ICANN expect that the committee will initially
> recommend that ISPs take steps to prevent packets with forged IP addresses
> from being used in DDOS attacks. This, however, does not directly address
> the problem of preventing a potential outage of the root system. It is,
> rather, an attempt to protect the root servers from attack. But don't
> expect ICANN's recommendations to be widely deployed. It's a difficult
> process to get ISPs worldwide to do the work required. Rather, expect DDOS
> to remain a fact of life on the net for now. There are technical solutions
> available, and technicians and scientists are working to solve the DDOS
> problem. Until then, taking control of root operations at the user or ISP
> level is a more logical approach to avoiding any potential interruption to
> service.
>
> To survive a sustained DDOS attack against the roots, the best solution
> an ISP has is to run its own system and eliminate any dependence on the US
> government for basic internet services. It would also be prudent for other
> primary namespaces like .com. Unfortunately, though, it would require a
> considerable amount of resources -- the .com zone file alone is well over
> a gigabyte in size. But the root file is very manageable and can easily
> be run on an ISP's local domain name servers.
>
> In fact, large ISP's facilities and co-location sites don't rely on the
> USG for service. They run their own roots, and some mirror the USG root on
> their local domain servers. ISPs and individual users also have the option
> of leaving the USG root by switching to private root service providers.
>
> Cheers
> Joe Baptista
>
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Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 127k members/stakeholders strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 972-244-3801
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208



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