Aaron Beck wrote:
Im kind of under the impression that we're (ok, just me, but anyone else is welcome to jump on this bandwagon) trying to point out that class based thinking.. or even "well, most of the net is this" thinking is probably a bad idea.
The fact is that a /24 is far more dangerous as a smurf amplifier than a /30. Simple math tells you that there's 127 times as many possible hosts hitting you.
Kludges n' hacks may work most of the time, but kludges and hacks are just that.. kludgey and hackish. Hard coded defines, precompiled bins, etc have proven to be a less elegant method in other areas of the computing world... why should we repeat the same kind of mistake in the networking field?
Who suggested putting a x.x.x.255 filter into IOS itself? An access-list in a config is hardly hard-coding.
A smurf attack is just that, a smurf attack. Wouldnt the overall goal include removing the attack possibility in its entirety, not just a temporary solution that may solve some of the problems, but definetly not all of them?
If you have a suggestion for "removing the attack possibility in its entirety," please tell us. So far, nobody's come up with one. In the meantime, I'd rather solve 99% of the problem and deal with the remaining 1% than sit around arguing about "class based thinking" and "stereotypical ideologies" in between smurf attacks.
Assuming that most of the net is based on /24s, and that smaller subnets are generally internal to those /24's may be a safe assumption, but once again its probably not the best way to think about this problem (not that I have any hints on what the best way should be, but im fairly certain that applying a stereotypical ideology to this is "not a good thing").
Look at the list of IP addresses used in any smurf attack, and they will almost always be class C or class B broadcast addresses, usually the address of a NAP or well-connected ISP. There's no sense targeting a solution for a problem which doesn't exist. Solve the general case and buy time for the more specialized ones.
just my two bits and a lot of run on sentences.
Stephen -- Stephen Sprunk "Oops." Email: sprunk@paranet.com Sprint Paranet -Albert Einstein ICBM: 33.00151N 96.82326W