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    What is the biggest attack in GBPS you stopped

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    737 Posts 33 Posters 611.1k Views
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    • H
      Harvy66
      last edited by

      I noticed the first test had about 30Mb in the first test and only 9Mb on the second, after you made the change for adaptive scaling. What this a DDOS syn attack or just a normal one?

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      • S
        Supermule Banned
        last edited by

        DDoS.

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        • D
          doktornotor Banned
          last edited by

          @Supermule:

          Apparently not if you migrate to OPNsense…

          Excellent. So, now this thread finally can be closed…

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          • F
            firewalluser
            last edited by

            @doktornotor:

            @Supermule:

            Apparently not if you migrate to OPNsense…

            Excellent. So, now this thread finally can be closed…

            It doesnt help existing users of pfsense who dont want to waste time jumping ship to yet another product though.

            I personally would like to get to the bottom of it otherwise why even have a firewall at all then other than it helps bad actors who might be in play in a variety of ways including misleading people on threads in security forums?

            All or nothing.

            Capitalism, currently The World's best Entertainment Control System and YOU cant buy it! But you can buy this, or some of this or some of these

            Asch Conformity, mainly the blind leading the blind.

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            • A
              almabes
              last edited by

              Status update:

              I am at a point where I need help.  I am not a BSD or UNIX guru.  I need help getting pf configured with a NAT behind it.  I also have DTrace working, but need guidance with what to run to get it to capture useful data during an attack.

              We tested base FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE. No pf, no NAT, just open to the wild internet.  Supermule's attacks would overwhelm my available bandwidth and the box would be unreachable.  The instant they stopped, the box was back.

              Then I tried to configure pf and screwed myself.  I don't have console access to the bare metal FreeBSD box, while sitting on my couch.  I'll fix it when I'm in the office today.

              After screwing myself, I had yard work to get done before the rains that saturated Texas attempted to do the same to Georgia and deliver a repaired laptop to the owner of a barbecue restaurant.

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              • H
                Harvy66
                last edited by

                @almabes:

                Supermule's attacks would overwhelm my available bandwidth and the box would be unreachable.

                Orerwhelming bandwidth is the expected situation, we're concerned about overwhelming the CPU for a fairly high end CPU and a small amount of traffic.

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                • A
                  almabes
                  last edited by

                  From what I could see in top, the attack did not get anywhere near overwhelming a CPU on the bare metal box.  Interrupts were fairly low, as well.  Unfortunately, the circuit is only 20Mb, but the CPE is a Catalyst 3500 series L3 switch, unlike my home connection.

                  Then I screwed myself trying to activate pf.

                  The box is not exactly high end, but it's not a steaming pile of doggie doo with an OS either.  It only has the one Intel em interface, not an not an Intel igb.  I'm going to scrounge up another GigE NIC today to stick in it, among things I have to do to pay bills.

                  I'm trying to test methodically, one layer at a time.

                  1. Base FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.  No pf, no NAT
                  2. Base FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.  pf, no NAT
                  3. Base FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.  pf, NAT no ports forwarded
                  4. Base FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.  pf, NAT one port forwarded to box on LAN

                  and so on…

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                  • S
                    Supermule Banned
                    last edited by

                    The bandwith comsumed depends on the handling of the firewall…

                    It sounds odd, but its not a bandwith attack and the reply vs. no reply from the FW is the difference between 30mbit and 7-8mbit traffic.

                    Its hard to explain but when I see the traffic graphs its very different when the FW loses packets and when it survives.

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                    • F
                      firewalluser
                      last edited by

                      @Harvy66:

                      @almabes:

                      Supermule's attacks would overwhelm my available bandwidth and the box would be unreachable.

                      Orerwhelming bandwidth is the expected situation, we're concerned about overwhelming the CPU for a fairly high end CPU and a small amount of traffic.

                      Exactly, its quite possible there might be too code expected to run when considering the workload Snort has to do when SM tested it with snort running.

                      Nothing can be done by a fw when the bandwith is tested to the max provided the fw can handle the bandwith in the first place which is going to be different due to different hw in use including differences in cpu's, bus speeds of the mb, nic's used etc etc. Thats a lot of variables to check.

                      Add in additional packages and services that its expected to run and before long you end up with something like a MS Small Business Server which is expected to handle quite alot of work on one box and then users wonder why networks grind to a halt when everyone logs in at the same time in the morning.

                      Capitalism, currently The World's best Entertainment Control System and YOU cant buy it! But you can buy this, or some of this or some of these

                      Asch Conformity, mainly the blind leading the blind.

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                      • S
                        Supermule Banned
                        last edited by

                        Snort is not the issue since it didnt matter if it was there or not.

                        I wanted Snort on the testbox because its nice and I wanted to test it to see if it did somthing bad/good in regards to the overall load on the box.

                        When one core hits 100% its gone….

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                        • F
                          firewalluser
                          last edited by

                          Well lots of possibilities but imo until we can get Dtrace working on a pfsense machine its going to be guess work for now.

                          Capitalism, currently The World's best Entertainment Control System and YOU cant buy it! But you can buy this, or some of this or some of these

                          Asch Conformity, mainly the blind leading the blind.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • S
                            Supermule Banned
                            last edited by

                            EDIT: Rant over…

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                            • F
                              firewalluser
                              last edited by

                              Any reason why?

                              Perhaps they feel Dtrace is not the best tool for the job?
                              Maybe too busy in the short term?
                              Some other reason?

                              It still doesnt stop us from having a go though does it?

                              Capitalism, currently The World's best Entertainment Control System and YOU cant buy it! But you can buy this, or some of this or some of these

                              Asch Conformity, mainly the blind leading the blind.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • T
                                tim.mcmanus
                                last edited by

                                @Supermule:

                                Yes and the dev's dont want to help at all.

                                Devs have helped.

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                                • A
                                  almabes
                                  last edited by

                                  @tim.mcmanus:

                                  @Supermule:

                                  Yes and the dev's dont want to help at all.

                                  Devs have helped.

                                  I agree with Tim, here.  I  started a conversation with the Devs last week.  Not going into it completely on this thread though. 
                                  Long and the short of it was:

                                  A) We have a mismatch of problem and solution (DoS attack and Stateful packet filtering device)
                                  B) We need to recreate the problem on FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.  (Something I am working on with Supermule)
                                  C) DTrace will help locate the issue, and the quickest way to get it going is on a stock FreeBSD box.

                                  The message from devs was also educational as to the architecture of BSD in general, and FreeBSD specifically.

                                  When we isolate the issue, I will release documentation.  Keep your pants on.  If you can help with tracing or logging, or configuring pf then help me.  It'll help the community get the desired results (pfSense more resistant to nefarious scripts) much quicker.

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                                  • S
                                    Supermule Banned
                                    last edited by

                                    https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=24337.0

                                    Very interesting thread!

                                    Do we have any that have something else than em driver nics on the boxes?

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                                    • T
                                      tim.mcmanus
                                      last edited by

                                      @Supermule:

                                      https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=24337.0

                                      Very interesting thread!

                                      Do we have any that have something else than em driver nics on the boxes?

                                      So it's a driver and an OS issue, you don't say?  ;D

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                                      • S
                                        Supermule Banned
                                        last edited by

                                        We dont know yet since we have tuned the damn thing hence a lot of numbers dont add up in the default settings in pfsense.

                                        So we are working on it :D

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                                        • T
                                          tim.mcmanus
                                          last edited by

                                          I do think the last link you posted was excellent with a lot of good discussion, and it might be worth testing non-em boxes.  All of my interfaces are em's, so I won't be able to help.

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                                          • F
                                            firewalluser
                                            last edited by

                                            I've got a usb2 10/100 plugable.com usb nic currently on my wan interface which I can swap with a gigabit usb3 plugable.com usb nic if need be as well as a sole onboard intel nic built into my little Intel D847 dual core celeron with 8Gb of ram and 30Gb msata ssd, so I can test all 3 formats to see how the different network drivers work on the same system by reassigning the wan interface. Avg CPU load is between 30-40% since installing the latest version of snort on it the other day so it should fall over quite quickly without any system tuning if this thread is anything to go by.

                                            I can do it tomorrow later on in the morning as have appointments first thing as I've now found about about dangling states which was holding me up.

                                            Capitalism, currently The World's best Entertainment Control System and YOU cant buy it! But you can buy this, or some of this or some of these

                                            Asch Conformity, mainly the blind leading the blind.

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