Conference Session A14
Paper #1
Disclaimer — This paper partially fulfills a writing requirement for first year (freshman) engineering students at the
University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. This paper is a student, not a professional, paper. This paper
is based on publicly available information and may not be provide complete analyses of all relevant data. If this paper is used
for any purpose other than these authors’ partial fulfillment of a writing requirement for first year (freshman)
engineering students at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, the user does so at his or
her own risk.
PREVENTING SYN FLOOD DOS ATTACKS
Brian Maher, bkm28@pitt.edu, Bursic, 2:00, Thomas Bui, tnb100@pitt.edu, Lora, 6:00
SYN FLOOD ATTACKS
As computer technology becomes more unique and
complicated, the need for cybersecurity has increased. In
particular, SYN flood denial of service, or DoS, attacks have
become extremely popular and effective throughout the
hacking community. Hackers DoS servers or computers to
target valuable information such as credit card information
and perhaps even social security numbers. These attacks
cause computer machines or servers unavailable to the
intended users. SYN flood, a type of DoS attack, begins when
the client system begins by sending a SYN message to server.
Second, the server must acknowledge the SYN/ACK message
by sending back a SYN message back to the server or client.
Lastly, the server acknowledges the SYN message by sending
a SYN/ACK message to the host. These three steps are
known to be a “three-way handshake’. In other words, SYN
flooding sends too many packets to a single server
overloading the server and using all resources and memory of
the server.
Every year there are countless hacked e-mails and other
types of fraud. Countless people have access to the internet
nowadays, and anybody that has internet access, is open to
SYN flooding. Furthermore, these attacks can be launched at
specific hosts such as somebody’s router or a network server
system. As of right now, it is almost impossible to eliminate
every IP-spoofed packet. However, there are still ways to
decrease the possibility of this happening and even ways to
know if there is an incoming “spoof packet”. If not dealt with
immediately, SSYN flooding can remain unnoticed and
potentially crash entire networks or websites. For example, if
one worked in the e-commerce of medical field, and a server
suddenly experienced SYN flooding, valuable resources and
real-time services would be lost.
The first step to fixing a problem, is recognizing that
there is a problem. Everybody must first understand what a
DoS attack is. My partner and I would explain and define
what a denial of service attack. After that, we would explain
the many types of DoS attacks available but specifically
explain how SYN flooding works. Next, the dangers of SYN
flooding would be our next topic. Only after knowing how it
works can someone understand how dangerous it can be.
After being able to understand how SYN flooding works and
the dangers, we would explain how to prevent and protect
oneself from any future SYN flooding attacks. The
knowledge of how SYN flooding works leads a user to detect
an impending attack and stop it before it ever occurs.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
REFERENCES
[1] M. Bogdanoski (2013). “Analysis of the SYN Flood DoS
Attack”
(Online Article) http://www.mecs-press.org/ijcnis/ijcnis-v5n8/IJCNIS-V5-N8-1.pdf
This online article that was published by a refereed
research paper publisher. It explains the types of systems that
can most vulnerable to the DoS, specifically SYN flood,
attacks and a detailed description of what exactly the attacks
are. This article analyzes the effects of a SYN flood attack on
a system. This will help us what SYN flood attacks are and
what systems should be most conscious of a possible attack.
[2] K. Geetha (2014). “SYN Flooding Attack – Identification
and
Analysis”
(Online
Article)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=7033828#.V
pW_iFvqtLU.link
This article was published for a recent International
Conference on Information Communication, and details the
impacts of the SYN flood attacks on servers. It goes into the
attack nodes that send the TCP SYN requests and follows the
entire process from start to finish. This will help me and my
partner adequately explain the process in our paper.
SOURCES CONSULTED
D. Boteanu (Oct. 2013). “A Comprehensive Study of Queue
Management as a DoS Counter-Measure” (Online Article)
University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering 1
Submission Date
Brian Maher
Thomas Bui
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph
&AN=90290396&site=ehost-live
This article is from a peer-reviewed journal focuses on the
defense against the DoS attacks, in particular SYN flood
attacks. This article explains the basic model for an attack,
meaning why it happens and what the aim of the attack is.
This article will be an important one when we explain the
purpose of these attacks and why people use them to do the
things they are capable of.
This article is from a periodical that publishes writings
that can help enterprises learn about all things involving the
computers. This article talks about the risks of DoS attacks
and their effects on the internet and its security. It specifically
talks about the networking of computers during a SYN flood
attack and the different attack sizes that occur. This will help
us when we are explaining the variety of attacks that SYN
floods are used for.
S. Mercyshalinie (Dec. 2014). “Defense Against DoS Attack:
PSO Approach In Virtualization” (Online Article)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/icp.jsp?arnumber=7229709#.V
pXAv3BDEFs.link
This article was published for an Advanced Computing
Conference and explains how to defend against DoS attacks.
It briefly explains what a SYN flood attack is and what its
purpose may be, then it gets into why it is important that we
have a form of defense against it. Lastly, it proposes a viable
solution and even shows a study on the data that they
collected regarding using their method of defense. This
article will be critical when we asses the ways to disrupt and
stop an attack.
D.Deepthi (Oct. 2013) “TCP SYN Flood Attack Detection
And Prevention” (Online Article)
http://ijcttjournal.org/Volume4/issue-10/IJCTTV4I10P107.pdf
This article is from a peer-reviewed journal publisher and
talks about the trustworthiness of servers when there are
attacks such as SYN floods that they are extremely
vulnerable to. It also states the wide area that the attacks can
be used on, one of the most frightening is halting online
transactions. This paper explains what the attacks are and a
simple way to stop them. This will be very important when
me and my partner need to elaborate on how the SYN flood
attacks are used.
T. Eyck (Jul. 2014). “Coding Freedom: The Ethics and
Aesthetics of Hacking” (Online Book)
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthTyp
e=ip,uid&db=sih&AN=96868922&scope=site
This online book was published as a set of journal reviews
for many different articles. This article analyzes the ethics of
hacking in the community. This report goes into examples of
hackers and the damage they have done to communities. It
also states how they can benefit society but revealing behind
the scenes things the public should know. This source will be
integral for us when we try to analyze the ethics of SYN
flood attacks.
S. Jamali (Aug. 2014). “Defense Against SYN Flooding
Attacks: A Particle Swarm Optimization Approach” (Online
Textbook)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004579061
4001591
This is a section of a textbook that was published for
computer and electrical engineering education. The text
details what SYN flood attacks are and how each attack can
vary from one another. It then proposes an alternative method
of defense against DoS attacks. This defense treats the attack
as an optimization problem and uses PSO algorithms to solve
it. They believe that this will not fully defends against it but
decrease the attacks effectiveness. This will be important
when we try to explain the defensive side of DoS attacks.
S. Kerner (Jul. 2015). “DDoS Attacks Overwhelm Targets
With Ever Rising Data Floods” (Online Arcticle)
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph
&AN=109363719&site=ehost-live
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