On Apr 3, 2014, at 3:38 PM, bert hubert <[email protected]> wrote:

> We hear from many operators that this has successfully mitigated the impact 
> of this DoS both on them and on the target.

This is an interesting feature, but there are a couple of other considerations:

1.      This attack traffic is in many cases being bounced through broadband 
CPE which are misconfigured as open DNS forwarders.  They can potentially be 
abused for DNS reflection/amplification attacks, so it's important that they be 
remediated.  

2.      If the situation is as described above, there's another way to 
temporarily resolve this particular problem (pardon the pun, heh).  Simply 
implement an ACL on the coreward interfaces of the broadband customer 
aggregation routers, something like this (obviously, it should be integrated in 
a situationally-appropriate manner with any existing iACL and tACL stanzas; and 
the IP address ranges in these ACL stanzas should reflect the actual IP address 
ranges in use on the consumer broadband access networks in question):

-----

access-list 101 remark Apply these stanzas inbound on coreward customer 
aggregation gateway interfaces.
access-list 101 remark Deny inbound traffic to UDP/53 on broadband customer 
networks.
access-list 101 deny udp any 172.19.25.0 0.0.0.255 eq 53
access-list 101 remark Allow all other IP traffic to customer nodes - VERY 
important!
access-list 101 permit ip any 172.19.25.0 0.0.0.255

-----

The above example ACL stanzas are in Cisco ACL syntax.  They can be implemented 
on Juniper and other devices by utilizing the relevant ACL syntax.

This *must* be tested, then piloted, before general deployment, and must be 
scrubbed in terms of AUPs, etc.  It *must* also be socialized to customers and 
to internal support staff prior to general deployment.  

If customers are running older resolver code which sources queries from UDP/53, 
then this ACL will cause problems for them; utilizing flow telemetry to 
determine the likelihood of these corner-cases arising is very important, along 
with plans to proactively handle them without breaking the Internet for these 
customers.

This is *not* a permanent solution, and should *not* be left in place forever.  
The *real* solution is to clean up the broken, misconfigured CPE devices, and 
that must be done, anyways.

Operators should poke holes in the above ACL to allow their dedicated 
management systems to send packets to UDP/53 in order to facilitate scanning 
for broken devices; they should also poke holes in it to allow such scanning 
from <http://www.openresolverproject.org/> and the self-test on 
<http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/dnscheck.html>.  The folks behind these 
projects should be contacted directly in order to obtain the relevant IP 
address ranges (the respective contact email addresses can be found on the Web 
pages listed above).

ACLs of this nature are highly undesirable.  They are a form of 
arteriosclerosis which has been affecting the Internet since ACLs were 
invented, and the problem gets worse over time, because folks put them into 
place and then forget that they're there.  But judicious *temporary* use of 
such an ACL, combined with a commitment to fix the underlying proximate issue 
(in this case, misconfigured CPE devices) and then remove the ACL, can be 
tactically useful in order to provide relief and maintain availability in the 
interim.

This is a *temporary* measure intended to provide immediate relief whilst the 
*real* solution - i.e., remediating the broken CPE - is pursued.  And it *must* 
be tested, piloted, and validated prior to any general deployment.  And it 
*must* be removed as soon as the broken CPE are remediated.

Obligatory BCP38/BCP84/SAC-004/S.A.V.E. exhortation should be considered as 
read.

;>

To clarify, I am *not* an enthusiastic proponent of these types of measures.  
Indiscriminate, de facto-permanent filtering of the problem-of-the-day has 
caused untold damage to the Internet ecosystem.  This temporary emergency 
measure is being posited as just that - a *temporary emergency measure* - and 
it should *not* be deployed and then left in place for the duration (i.e., 
forever).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <[email protected]> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

          Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

                       -- John Milton

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