TCP Injections for Fun and Clogging

TL;DR

This paper introduces off-path TCP injection-based clogging DoS attacks that can be executed with minimal requirements, such as sandboxed JavaScript, to cause large-scale network disruptions, highlighting the need for cryptographic defenses.

Contribution

The paper presents novel off-path TCP injection techniques that require only sandboxed JavaScript, enabling large-scale clogging DoS attacks against third parties, with improved attack efficiency and modular design.

Findings

Achieved high amplification factors with off-path attacks

Injected TCP segments using only sandboxed JavaScript

Demonstrated effectiveness in clogging third-party networks

Abstract

We present a new type of clogging DoS attacks, with the highest amplification factors achieved by off-path attackers, using only puppets, i.e., sandboxed malware on victim machines. Specifically, we present off-path variants of the Opt-ack, Ack-storm and Coremelt DoS attacks, achieving results comparable to these achieved previously achieved by eavesdropping/MitM attackers and (unrestricted) malware. In contrast to previous off-path attacks, which attacked the client (machine) running the malware, our attacks address a very different goal: large-scale clogging DoS of a third party, or even of backbone connections. Our clogging attacks are based on off-path TCP injections. Indeed, as an additional contribution, we present improved off-path TCP injection attacks. Our new attacks significantly relax the requirements cf. to the known attacks; specifically, our injection attack requires only a Java script in browser sandbox (not 'restricted malware'), does not depend on specific operating system properties, and is efficient even when client's port is determined using recommended algorithm. Our attacks are constructed modularly, allowing reuse of modules for other scenarios and replacing modules as necessary. We present specific defenses, however, this work is further proof to the need to base security on sound foundations, using cryptography to provide security even against MitM attackers.