On 11 October 2013 14:03, <thorsten.s...@t-systems.com> wrote: > I found the issue below concerning inactive client connections (see > *Cassandra > Security*<http://jkb.netii.net/index.php/pub/sinosqldb/cassandra-security>). > We are using Cassandra 1.2.4 and the Cassandra JDBC driver as client. Is > this still an existing issue? > Quoted from site above: > Denial of Service problem: > Cassandra uses a Thread- Per-Client model in its network code. Since > setting up a connection requires the Cassandra server to start a new thread > on each connection (in addition to the TCP overhead incurred by the > network), the Cassandra project recommends utilizing some sort of > connection pooling. An attacker can prevent the Cassandra server from > accepting new client connections by causing the Cassandra server to > allocate all its resources to fake connection attempts. The only pieces of > information required by an attacker are the IP addresses of the cluster > members, and this information can be obtained by passively sniffing the > network. The current implementation doesn’t timeout inactive connections, > so any connection that is opened without actually passing data consumes a > thread and a file-descriptor that are never released. >
This is still an issue, but you must not expose Cassandra to untrusted users. Just like you wouldn't let untrusted users have network access to your Oracle, MySQL, etc. servers. Richard.
