I'm being hit by a collection of scoundrels all using source port 53, seeking 'x.kyuhhh.strangled.net/TXT/IN'. No, I am not authoritative for that name. This happened on cardinal.lizella.net.
Attackers: ========= 50.19.102.31 :: ec2-50-19-102-31.compute-1.amazonaws.com. 50.19.106.0 :: ec2-50-19-106-0.compute-1.amazonaws.com. 66.228.54.207 :: li296-207.members.linode.com. 67.21.85.227 :: 227.85.21.67.in-addr.arpa not found: 2(SERVFAIL) network:NetName:MICHAEL-STOWE-67.21.85.192 network:OrgName:RAVENOUS-NETWORKS 68.243.98.206 :: 68-243-98-206.pools.spcsdns.net. 108.118.122.235 :: 108-118-122-235.pools.spcsdns.net. (NXDOMAIN, but owned by Sprint) 173.137.7.112 :: 173-137-7-112.pools.spcsdns.net. 174.151.36.3 :: 174-151-36-3.pools.spcsdns.net. 174.97.168.166 :: cpe-174-097-168-166.nc.res.rr.com. 174.97.171.72 :: cpe-174-097-171-072.nc.res.rr.com. 184.254.7.84 :: 184-254-7-84.pools.spcsdns.net. (NXDOMAIN, but owned by Sprint) 184.73.197.248 :: ec2-184-73-197-248.compute-1.amazonaws.com. Logs of the last one: ==================== May 24 01:13:45 cardinal named[1096]: client 184.73.197.248#53: query (cache) 'x.kyuhhh.strangled.net/TXT/IN' denied May 24 01:14:15 cardinal last message repeated 956 times May 24 01:15:15 cardinal last message repeated 1998 times May 24 01:16:15 cardinal last message repeated 2886 times May 24 01:17:15 cardinal last message repeated 3839 times May 24 01:18:15 cardinal last message repeated 3872 times May 24 01:19:15 cardinal last message repeated 3952 times May 24 01:20:15 cardinal last message repeated 3981 times May 24 01:21:10 cardinal last message repeated 3530 times May 24 01:21:11 cardinal named[1096]: client 184.73.197.248#53: query (cache) 'x.kyuhhh.strangled.net/TXT/IN' denied May 24 01:21:42 cardinal last message repeated 1973 times May 24 01:22:43 cardinal last message repeated 3925 times May 24 01:23:44 cardinal last message repeated 3849 times May 24 01:24:45 cardinal last message repeated 3850 times May 24 01:25:45 cardinal last message repeated 3857 times May 24 01:26:24 cardinal last message repeated 2457 times If you're keeping score at home, that was 44927 until I blocked it in the firewall. Another 4695 hits on the firewall means it did almost 50K queries in approximately 13-15 minutes total. All the attackers were doing similar things, but most were not so easy to calculate the total. because at 2011-05-23 01:12 UTC there were two of them hitting at the same time. And that also leads to an interesting observation: when there were two hitting, there were *exactly* two. One would stop, and another (which might have been previously attacking) would take its place. This kept up until 01:39, when I saw the activity and blocked the offending (spoofed?) IP addresses in the firewall. Above is all that I have seen so far on 2011-05-24, but there too the timing is interesting: it leads me to believe I can expect a resumed assault at 01:10-:15 UTC tonight. But since some of the attacking IP addresses might already be blocked, it might not show in the log. Questions: ========= 1. What is this? Is it targeted at me (my site) personally, or some kind of worm/malware crawling the Internet? 2. Is it harming me, other than the waste of bandwidth and logging? 3. Is there anything that I can (or should) do with named to limit or mitigate these attacks? 3a. Can named trigger an external action on receipt of a certain query? 4. What can be done outside of named about this? 4a. fail2ban, I know about, but would rather not. 4b. Linux iptables -m recent connection limiting Linux iptables "recent" match: ============================= I know how to do this; in fact I have firewalls limiting both SSH and SIP access using -m recent rules. What I am not so sure about: how much is a "safe" limit? I think if I set a limit of maybe a hundred queries in 10 seconds, I would stop this kind of attack without affecting normal resolution. In a related matter, as noted, this attack was all on source port 53. It's not safe to block source port 53, is it? I suppose there are lots of broken resolvers out there which are still using source port 53. But maybe my "recent" limitations should only apply to --sport 53 queries? Here is what I did with -m recent for SIP: http://www.spinics.net/lists/netfilter/msg49676.html The approach for DNS, at least on the UDP side, will have to be similar, because this whole attack would be in conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED (after the initial refused query.) -- Offlist mail to this address is discarded unless "/dev/rob0" or "not-spam" is in Subject: header _______________________________________________ bind-users mailing list bind-users@lists.isc.org https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/bind-users