Review: TCP/IP security threats and attack methods

  • Authors:
  • B. Harris;R. Hunt

  • Affiliations:
  • Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Wellington, New Zealand;Department of Computer Science, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • Computer Communications
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

The TCP/IP protocol suite is vulnerable to a variety of attacks ranging from password sniffing to denial of service. Software to carry out most of these attacks is freely available on the Internet. These vulnerabilities-unless carefully controlled-can place the use of the Internet or intranet at considerable risk. This article classifies a range of known attack methods focusing in particular on SYN flooding, IP spoofing, TCP sequence number attack, TCP session hijacking, RST and FIN attacks and the Ping O' Death. The article concludes with an examination of the vulnerabilities of the common protocols carried by TCP/IP (including SMTP, Telnet, NTP, Finger, NFS, FTP, WWW and X windows) and proposes configuration methods to limit their vulnerability.