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From: Alfred Perlstein (brightWINTELCOM.NET)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 12:51:44 CST

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    * nealk <nealkverinet.com> [010109 10:41] wrote:
    > I think I have stumbled across a new category of distributed denial
    > of service (DDoS). (If this is old news, I'm sure I'll be corrected;
    > it's new to me.)
    >
    > Traditional DDoS have the follow flow:
    > - A host (or few hosts) controls a large number of clients.
    > - The clients are directed by the host to attack a single site/server.
    > The attack can either be network or service oriented.
    >
    >
    > Alternate (New) DDoS model:
    > - Server 'A' directly prevents all clients from accessing server 'B'.
    >
    >
    > Here's an example of how it could work:
    > I recently posted about a Flash plugin risk that can crash or hang a browser.
    >
    > Let's say that someone placed a corrupt Flash (SWF) file on a web server.
    > All clients that access the web server and that view the Flash file
    > (about 90% of all browsers can, so this is a good assumption) will
    > have their browsers crash or hang.

    While this is a possibility, it doesn't make much sense, news would
    spread like wildfire and people would drop links to the add service
    pretty quickly. Your attack would need either:
    a) a suicidal company.
    b) a hacked ad server.
    c) widespread DNS poisoning.

    Ad services can do other nasties like using 302s to redirect hundreds
    or thousands of hits to a particularly system intensive service on
    a remote site, that's a nasty DoS but also a good way to get yourself
    involved in a nasty lawsuit.

    --
    -Alfred Perlstein - [brightwintelcom.net|alfredfreebsd.org]
    "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."