Posts Tagged ‘server pc’

How to check if your Linux WebServer is under a DoS attack

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

There are few commands I usually use to track if my server is possibly under a Denial of Service attack or under Distributed Denial of Service

Sys Admins who still have not experienced the terrible times of being under a DoS attack are happy people for sure …

1. How to Detect a TCP/IP Denial of Service Attack This are the commands I use to find out if a loaded Linux server is under a heavy DoS attack, one of the most essential one is of course netstat.
To check if a server is under a DoS attack with netstat, it’s common to use:

linux:~# netstat -ntu | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n|wc -l

If the output of below command returns a result like 2000 or 3000 connections!, then obviously it’s very likely the server is under a DoS attack.

To check all the IPS currently connected to the Apache Webserver and get a very brief statistics on the number of times each of the IPs connected to my server, I use the cmd:

linux:~# netstat -ntu | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
221 80.143.207.107 233 145.53.103.70 540 82.176.164.36

As you could see from the above command output the IP 80.143.207.107 is either connected 221 times to the server or is in state of connecting or disconnecting to the node.

Another possible way to check, if a Linux or BSD server is under a Distributed DoS is with the list open files command lsof
Here is how lsof can be used to list the approximate number of ESTABLISHED connections to port 80.

linux:~# lsof -i TCP:80
litespeed 241931 nobody 17u IPv4 18372655 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 25u IPv4 18372659 TCP 85.17.159.89:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 30u IPv4 29149647 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:54565 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 33u IPv4 18372647 TCP 85.17.159.93:http (LISTEN)
litespeed 241931 nobody 34u IPv4 29137514 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:50885 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 35u IPv4 29137831 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:52312 (ESTABLISHED)
litespeed 241931 nobody 37w IPv4 29132085 TCP server.www.pc-freak.net:http->83.101.6.41:50000 (ESTABLISHED)

Another way to get an approximate number of established connections to let’s say Apache or LiteSpeed webserver with lsof can be achieved like so:

linux:~# lsof -i TCP:80 |wc -l
2100

I find it handy to keep track of above lsof command output every few secs with gnu watch , like so:

linux:~# watch "lsof -i TCP:80"

2. How to Detect if a Linux server is under an ICMP SMURF attack

ICMP attack is still heavily used, even though it’s already old fashioned and there are plenty of other Denial of Service attack types, one of the quickest way to find out if a server is under an ICMP attack is through the command:

server:~# while :; do netstat -s| grep -i icmp | egrep 'received|sent' ; sleep 1; done
120026 ICMP messages received
1769507 ICMP messages sent
120026 ICMP messages received
1769507 ICMP messages sent

As you can see the above one liner in a loop would check for sent and recieved ICMP packets every few seconds, if there are big difference between in the output returned every few secs by above command, then obviously the server is under an ICMP attack and needs to hardened.

3. How to detect a SYN flood with netstat

linux:~# netstat -nap | grep SYN | wc -l
1032

1032 SYNs per second is quite a high number and except if the server is not serving let’s say 5000 user requests per second, therefore as the above output reveals it’s very likely the server is under attack, if however I get results like 100/200 SYNs, then obviously there is no SYN flood targetting the machine 😉

Another two netstat command application, which helps determining if a server is under a Denial of Service attacks are:

server:~# netstat -tuna |wc -l
10012

and

server:~# netstat -tun |wc -l
9606

Of course there also some other ways to check the count the IPs who sent SYN to the webserver, for example:

server:~# netstat -n | grep :80 | grep SYN |wc -l

In many cases of course the top or htop can be useful to find, if many processes of a certain type are hanging around.

4. Checking if UDP Denial of Service is targetting the server

server:~# netstat -nap | grep 'udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort |uniq -c |sort -n

The above command will list information concerning possible UDP DoS.

The command can easily be accustomed also to check for both possible TCP and UDP denial of service, like so:

server:~# netstat -nap | grep 'tcp|udp' | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort |uniq -c |sort -n
104 109.161.198.86
115 112.197.147.216
129 212.10.160.148
227 201.13.27.137
3148 91.121.85.220

If after getting an IP that has too many connections to the server and is almost certainly a DoS host you would like to filter this IP.

You can use the /sbin/route command to filter it out, using route will probably be a better choice instead of iptables, as iptables would load up the CPU more than simply cutting the route to the server.

Here is how I remove hosts to not be able to route packets to my server:

route add 110.92.0.55 reject

The above command would null route the access of IP 110.92.0.55 to my server.

Later on to look up for a null routed IP to my host, I use:

route -n |grep -i 110.92.0.55

Well hopefully this should be enough to give a brief overview on how, one can dig in his server and find if he is under a Distributed Denial of Service, hope it’s helpful to somebody out there.
Cheers 😉

How to list enabled VirtualHosts in Apache on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

How Apache process vhost requests picture, how to list Apache virtualhosts on Linux and FreeBSD

I decided to start this post with this picture I found on onlamp.com article called “Simplify Your Life with Apache VirtualHosts .I put it here because I thing it illustrates quite well Apache’s webserver internal processes. The picture gives also a good clue when Virtual Hosts gets loaded, anways I’ll go back to the main topic of this article, hoping the above picture gives some more insight on how Apache works.;
Here is how to list all the enabled virtualhosts in Apache on Debian GNU / Linux serving pages:

server:~# /usr/sbin/ apache2ctl -S
VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:* is a NameVirtualHost
default server exampleserver1.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:2)
port * namevhost exampleserver2.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
port * namevhost exampleserver3.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/exampleserver3.com:1)
port * namevhost exampleserver4.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/exampleserver4.com:1)
...
Syntax OK

The line *:* is a NameVirtualHost, means the Apache VirtualHosts module will be able to use Virtualhosts listening on any IP address (configured on the host), on any port configured for the respective Virtualhost to listen on.

The next output line:
port * namevhost exampleserver2.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default Shows requests to the domain on any port will be accepted (port *) by the webserver as well as indicates the <VirtualHost> in the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:2 is defined on line 2 (e.g. :2).

To see the same all enabled VirtualHosts on FreeBSD the command to be issued is:

freebsd# pcfreak# /usr/local/sbin/httpd -S VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80 is a NameVirtualHost
default server www.pc-freak.net (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1218)
port 80 namevhost www.pc-freak.net (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1218)
port 80 namevhost pcfreak.afraid.org (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1353)
...
Syntax OK

On Fedora and the other Redhat Linux distributions, the apache2ctl -S should be displaying the enabled Virtualhosts.

One might wonder, what might be the reason for someone to want to check the VirtualHosts which are loaded by the Apache server, since this could be also checked if one reviews Apache / Apache2’s config file. Well the main advantage is that checking directly into the file might sometimes take more time, especially if the file contains thousands of similar named virtual host domains. Another time using the -S option is better would be if some enabled VirtualHost in a config file seems to not be accessible. Checking directly if Apache has properly loaded the VirtualHost directives ensures, there is no problem with loading the VirtualHost. Another scenario is if there are multiple Apache config files / installs located on the system and you’re unsure which one to check for the exact list of Virtual domains loaded.