An Approach For Detecting and Preventing DoS Attacks by Open Source Firewall System

International Journal of Advance Foundation and Research in Computer (IJAFRC)
Volume 3, Issue 1, January - 2016. ISSN 2348 4853, Impact Factor 1.317
An Approach for Detecting and Preventing DoS Attacks by

Open Source Firewall System
Krishna Bhutda, Prakhar Jain, Mani Prakash Singh, Tanveer Alam, Mr. Sumit A. Khandelwal
Dept. of Computer Engineering, MIT Academy of Engineering, Savitribai Phule Pune University
Alandi, Pune-India
kjbhutda@gmail.com, prakharjain777@gmail.com, maniprakashsingh123@gmail.com,
alamtanveer113@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, Denial of service (DoS) attacks, have become a major security threat to networks and
to the Internet, DoS is harmful to networks as it delays legitimate users from accessing the server.
Among various online attacks hampering IT security, Denial of Service (DoS) has the most
devastating effects. It has also put tremendous pressure over the security experts lately, in
bringing out effective defense solutions. These attacks could be implemented diversely with a
variety of tools and codes. Since there is not a single solution for DoS, this attack has managed to
prevail on internet for nearly a decade. Hence, it becomes indispensable to carry out these attacks
in small test bed environments in order to understand them better. The increased Cyber-attacks
in recent years have included violation of firewalls. Based on these facts, our main objective is to
present the formation of a platform for open source firewall, which induces a highly efficient
method to strengthen detection, control and also mitigation of such assaults. These real time
attacks are measured and analyzed using network traffic monitors. In addition to that, this
project also details various defense strategies that could be enabled on Open source Software
base firewall in order to mitigate these attacks. The detections are effective for small network
topologies and can also be extended to analogous large domains.
INDEX TERM: DoS Attack, Open Source Firewall, pfsense, Open DNS, VMWare workstation
I.
INTRODUCTION
Denial-of-Service (DoS) is a network security problem that poses a serious challenge to trustworthiness
of services deployed on the servers. The aim of DoS attacks is to make services unavailable to legitimate
users by flooding the victim with legitimate-like requests and current network architectures allow easyto-launch, hard-to-stop DoS attacks.[1]
It is an attempt by malicious users to carry out DoS attack indirectly with the help of many compromised
computers on the Internet. Attackers can compromise a huge number of computers by spreading a
computer worm using vulnerabilities in popular operating systems [1]. This exhausts the victim network
of resources such as bandwidth, computing power, etc., the victim is unable to provide services to its
legitimate clients and network performance is greatly deteriorated, moreover, with little or no advance
warning, a DoS attack can easily exhaust these resources within a short period of time. However, many
still believe that the traditional security tools such as firewalls can help them deal with the DoS attack [1,
2, 3, 4].
31 | 2016, IJAFRC All Rights Reserved
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Figure 1:Working of Firewall

Consider four clients namely PC1, PC2, PC3 & PC4 are connected in network. Refer fig. [1].
All of them are connected in star topology. All the clients trying to access the resources from the server
firstly the request will go through the firewall system. The firewall checks whether the coming request
from the client is authorized or not. In the figure PC1 (ip: 192.168.0.1) is unauthorized client trying to
access the server resources which is get denied by pfsense firewall system. And PC2 and PC3 (ip:
192.168.0.2 & 192.168.0.3 respectively) are authorized user so the firewall will allow to access the
resources. Here, PC4 is authorized client flooding the network and sending multiple request so the
firewall block the PC4 (ip: 192.168.0.4 ) because the firewall treats PC4 as attacker.
A DoS attack can be done in a several ways. The basic types of DoS attack include:
Flooding the network to prevent legitimate network traffic.
Disrupting the connections between two machines, thus preventing access to a service.
Preventing a particular individual from accessing a service.
Disrupting a service to a specific system or individual.
Disrupting the state of information, such resetting of TCP sessions
DoS attack can be characterized as an attack with the purpose of preventing legitimate users from using a
victim computing system or network resource. There are two types of DoS attack FDoS and LDoS. The
main purpose of DoS attack is to consume the resources or made the resources unavailable to the other
users. A victim can be a host, server, router, or any computing entity connected to the network. Defending
against DoS attacks is a serious problem due to their increased frequency, sophistication and strength of
attacks. Numerous defense mechanisms have been proposed to prevent, detect, and mitigate DoS attacks.
[5,6]
Nowadays firewall rules are formed based on organizational security policies which is usually about
allowing or denying access based on application, host, network addresses and content inspection. Such
rules do not essentially prevent all kinds of attacks that may happen in a network. For example, attacks
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such as scan or flood could still be possible within the allowed ranges. These days such attacks are quite
dynamic and change their characteristics which is not detected by the firewall. Hence a firewall that
understands attacks and keeps track of the same to take steps for prevention is required.
This capability is lacking in present-day firewalls. In our proposed open source firewall, we incorporate
such capabilities to the present day firewalls to be more vigilant and prevents attacks as well. We are
using pfsense as an open source firewall.
II. PROBLEM STATEMENT
Configuration of Open source firewall system for Detection and Prevention of DoS Attack.
A firewall is a network security system which monitor and controlled all the incoming or outgoing
network traffic based on predefined network security rule. Firewall is also used to detect & prevent the
DoS attack. DoS attack is a malicious technique used by the attack When an attacker perform a DoS attack
to a particular system in a network then its data packet passes through the firewall. Here firewall validate
the authenticity of data packet, on the basis of that it allow or reject the data packet. We are going to
Configure an Open Source firewall which will prevent all the malicious user to perform any type of DoS
attack in the network.
III. GOALS & OBJECTIVES
To Study about DoS Attack and Discussing the types of DoS attack.
To Study about the Router and its challenges.
To Study the Different types of Open Source Firewall and the services offered by firewall.
Implementing method of Detection and prevention of DoS attack by using firewall.
To Install and configure pfsense as Open Source firewall.
IV. TYPES OF FIREWALL

A Firewall is a protective system that lies in between internet and computer system. When we use
correctly the firewall it prevent unauthorized user to access of a network. [7]
There are two type of firewall:
1. Hardware firewall
2. Software firewall
Hardware firewall
Hardware firewalls are mostly used in broadband modems, and is the line of defense, using packet
filtering. Before packet reaching to our computer, it is firstly monitored by firewall and check from where
it come from. Firewall check the ip address or header is trusted or not. On the basis of it allow or drop the
packet.
Disadvantages of Hardware firewall system:
Cost. Normally, a dedicated firewall cost more than a software firewall.
It take more physical space and require wiring.
It is very difficult to install and upgrade.
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To overcome the limitation of cost in hardware firewall is to use software firewall.

Software firewall
Software firewalls are most suitable for home users not running a network, they are installed in the
operating system and only protect that particular machine, a software firewall will screen requests going
in and out of the computer and determine whether the request between the client and the source is valid
by looking at the predefined rules and verify the interaction.
Advantages of software firewall:
Cheaper the hardware firewall.
Easier to configure than hardware firewall.
It can be installed on laptop which we carry with us.
There are many open source firewall system available in the market. Some of them are as follows:
Iptable/Netfilter
Iptables/Netfilter is the most popular command line based firewall. It is the first line of defence of a Linux
server security. Many system administrators use it for fine-tuning of their servers. It filters the packets in
the network stack within the kernel itself.
Feature of Iptable/Netfilter:
It lists the contents of the packet filter ruleset.
Its lightning fast because it inspects only the packet headers.
Supports Backup and restoration with files.
IPCop Firewall
IPCop is an Open Source Linux firewall distribution, IPCop team is continuously working to provide a
stable, more secure, user friendly and highly configurable Firewall management system to their users.
IPCop provides a well designed web interface to manage the firewall. Its very useful and good for Small
businesses and Local PCs.
Feature of IPCop Firewall:
Its Color coded Web Interface allows you to Monitor the performance Graphics for CPU, Memory and
Disk as well as Network throughput.
Support Multiple language support.
Provides very secure stable and easily implementable upgrade and add on patches.
Shorewall
Shorewall or Shoreline Firewall is another very popular Open source firewall specialized for GNU/Linux.
It is build upon the Netfilter system built into the Linux kernel that also supports IPV6.
Features of Shorewall:
Uses Netfilters connection tracking facilities for stateful packet filtering.
Supports a wide range of routers/firewall/gateway applications.
Centralized firewall Administration.
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Multiple ISP support.
Supports VPN
V. STATEMENT OF SCOPE
In todays world of globalization, Security is most valuable thing in this digital world. Denial of service
(DoS) attacks, have become a major security threat to networks and to the Internet, DoS is harmful to
networks as it delays legitimate users from accessing the server. Among various online attacks DoS attack
is most effective attack in IT Security. It has also put tremendous pressure over the security experts
lately, in bringing out effective defense solutions. Firewall is the one of the solution for detecting and
preventing Dos attack. so that will increase performance and efficiency of our network.
Five common types of DoS Attack:
Lets look at how DoS attacks are performed and the techniques used. We will look at five common types
of attacks. [4, 5, 6, 7]
Ping of Death
The ping command is usually used to test the availability of a network resource. It works by sending
small data packets to the network resource. The ping of death takes advantage of this and sends data
packets above the maximum limit (65,536 bytes) that TCP/IP allows. TCP/IP fragmentation breaks the
packets into small chunks that are sent to the server. Since the sent data packages are larger than what
the server can handle, the server can freeze, reboot, or crash.
Smurf
This type of attack uses large amounts of Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) ping traffic target at
an Internet Broadcast Address. The reply IP address is spoofed to that of the intended victim. All the
replies are sent to the victim instead of the IP used for the pings. Since a single Internet Broadcast
Address can support a maximum of 255 hosts, a smurf attack amplifies a single ping 255 times. The effect
of this is slowing down the network to a point where it is impossible to use it.
Buffer overflow
A buffer is a temporal storage location in RAM that is used to hold data so that the CPU can manipulate it
before writing it back to the disc. Buffers have a size limit. This type of attack loads the buffer with more
data that it can hold. This causes the buffer to overflow and corrupt the data it holds. An example of a
buffer overflow is sending emails with file names that have 256 characters.
Teardrop
This type of attack uses larger data packets. TCP/IP breaks them into fragments that are assembled on
the receiving host. The attacker manipulates the packets as they are sent so that they overlap each other.
This can cause the intended victim to crash as it tries to re-assemble the packets.
SYN attack
SYN is short form for Synchronize. This type of attack takes advantage of the three-way handshake to
establish communication using TCP. SYN attack works by flooding the victim with incomplete SYN
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messages. This causes the victim machine to allocate memory resources that are never used and deny
access to legitimate users.
Limitations of Other Firewall
Un-customizable
Doesnt provide filtering based on operating system
VI. OUR PROPOSED SYSTEM

Mathematical modelling
Wherever Let consider S is a solution set as,
S = {s, I, O, fi, fo}
S Solution Set
s Start State
I Input {Packet1, Packet2,., Packetn }
O Output
fo Output function
fi Input function
fi = { f1, f2 } Where,
f1 = Data Packet (message) by legitimate user
f2 = Data Packet (message) by Attacker
fo Output function
fo = { f3, f4 } Where,
f3 = Allow access to user
f4 = denied access to user
F Filter function
Multi requests are differentiated with respect to time at every amount of time t,
d/dt(msg) = (dv/dt)+(di/dt)
(dv/dt) = d/dt(msg) - (di/dt)
Taking integration on both side,
We get,
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v = msg I
-------- (1)
where ,
v - valid messages
i - Invalid messages
f3 allow function
f3 is the function which contain all allowed packets into it which are normal/valid.
After allowing some of packets, remaining packet will be get discarded by firewall system as following
step,
f4 - function to block access to user
f4 = v f3
All the allowed packets get subtracted from all the valid packets.
Hence, we get the f4 set collection which contains all the invalid packets that will be denied by firewall
system.
Algorithm of Packet Observation Technique(POT)

Detection will be on the basis of
Message context
Frequency of Message
NML (Normal Message List)
AML (Abnormal Message List)
NML <Msg, Timestamp, Counter>
AML <Msg, Timestamp>
Where,
Msg Message context
Timestamp Last time message successfully submitted.
Counter Represent No. of message.
POT Algorithm
1: procedure MOM
2: Input Mnewi
. New Message
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3:
4:
5:
if Mnewi e A then
END
else
.Fake Message
for i = 1i to jNj do
6:
i
. Normal Message
7:
if Mnew e N and Mnew:counter > f and f > threshold then
8:
END
. Replayed Message
9:
end if
10:
end for
11:
end if
12:
END
13: end procedure
For example,
Assume,
msg = 36; // there are total 36 messages or packets th = 10; // threshold value of messages
Using Filter function (it will differentiate normal and abnormal messages on the basis of message
context)
|A| = 6; //there are 6 abnormal messages or packets
|N| = 30; // there are 30 normal messages or packets then first 6 should be discarded because they are
abnormal.
From the remaining 30 packets,
Now, if A single user sending multiple messages from the same ip address which is msg.counter (from
same ip ) = 13; // 13 messages from a single user who is flooding the network.
These 13 messages will be get discarded by verifying its timestamp.
Timestamp indicates the last time when the messages has been submitted, which can be used to
determine whether they are expired. 17 packets are normal/able to process. // (30-13)
Figure 2: Architectural Diagram
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Working:
Firstly, a user sends a request for Connection with the server through authentication process.
The credentials provided by user are compared to those on file in a database of authorized users'
information on a local operating system or within an authentication server.
If the credentials match, the process is completed and the user is granted authorization for
establishing the connection.
If the credentials isnt match then that particular user will not allowed for the connection.
Now if credentials is matched, then every requests from the user will passed through the firewall
system. Firewall system will identify the users IP & IP Header.
Now if that user is trusted user according to firewall then allow that user to access the services. Else
deny it from accessing the services.
After Which, Server will process the Trusted users request and response according to it.
Input
Input will be number of packet that may be requested.
Output
Output will be authentication & authorization or denial (Packet will be Discarded from network) of
packet based on the detection and prevention rule.
Application:
Malware Prevention
IT security
Database Security
Prevent Hijacking servers
VII. CONCLUSION
Modern security technologies have developed mechanisms to defend most forms of DoS attacks, but due
to the unique characteristics of DoS, Open Source Firewall(eg. pfsense) can be configure for the detection
and prevention of DoS attack. Pfsense can be used as router or firewall with many advanced features
such as traffic shaper, Load Balancer and much more. It can be used in small scale to large scale
environment.
VIII.
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