Crippling denial-of-service attacks have become so much of a problem on the Internet that one security vendor plans to start giving away a portion of its DoS prevention technology in an effort to get more administrators and network operators to help solve the problem.
Reactive Network Solutions Inc. next week will begin offering a free download of FloodGuard Alert, a subset of the functionality in its flagship FloodGuard anti-DoS product. Reactive Network officials hope that if the application is installed on enough networks across the Internet, vigilant administrators will help prevent widespread outages and latency issues associated with large DoS and distributed DoS attacks by detecting and halting them before they get out of hand.
The issue of DDoS attacks tend to get quite a lot of attention in the wake of a high-profile incident such as the attack on the Internets root name servers last year. However, attention soon fades until the next big attack, hampering the search for any real solution to the problem.
Like many such solutions. FloodGuard Alert utilizes a set of algorithms to detect known and new attacks. Over time, the application builds a picture of what the normal traffic on the network looks like and then uses that model to detect anomalous traffic and patterns.
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The application includes a Java-based user interface that displays a visual map of the networks traffic and offers a set of administrative tools. FloodGuard Alert can perform dynamic traceback analysis of packets, includes several reports and a real-time alarm system.
The application will be available for download April 14 and will run only on Intel Corp.-based Linux machines.
Reactive Networks is based in Redwood City, Calif.
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