Every new test RedWolf swaps the IP addresses of the ‘good’ vs. Here’s how RedWolf does it: RedWolf can simulate real browsers (Chrome, Webkit) as well as API style (curl-like) requests. To keep your 3 rd party DDoS provider honest RedWolf suggests mixing in some ‘good traffic generators’ that make low-rate normal HTTP(s) requests to sites. RedWolf has found some do and some do not. When testing 3 rd party DDoS mitigation providers a common question is ‘do they re-use their blacklists’. Organizations wishing to know effective strategies to block these attacks which often slip through traditional packet-oriented DDoS defense systems can contact RedWolf. The common (albiet incorrect) belief that because DDoS attacks are large also means each individual attacker sends an abnormally large amount of traffic. It is possible to defend against these cases, but it requires non-trivial DDoS countermeasures that many organizations have not deployed or configured.

It should be obvious that an attacker wanting to defeat the above countermeasures would use a large botnet so that each attacker’s overall traffic rate below each of these thresholds while at the same time the sum of all the attack traffic overwhelms the target. What attackers do to try and defeat simple anti-DDoS countermeasures: The best type of DDoS testing involves a mix of traffic types to test all of the above controls. Exceed threshold of established simultaneous TCP connections.High inbound/outbound bandwidth in bits/sec.Two identical ‘bots’, one topologically close (say in the same country) and the other on the other side of the world will have traffic patterns that look wildly different for layer 7 attacks.Īlmost all DDoS mitigation systems have the capability to mitigate aggressive traffic based on identifying source IP’s which exceed simple policy thresholds like: A real DDoS attack features attackers traffic patterns vary considerably based on the compromised hosts CPU and network capabilities as well as the round-trip latency. While this can generate a DDoS the traffic patterns generated vary considerably from what would be seen in the wild. In the ‘old days’ testing DDoS involved a pen-tester remotely logged in to a few Internet hosts and manually co-ordinating some commands from a ‘bash prompt’. It’s not enough to send ‘lots of traffic’ – you need to make the attack traffic distribution look realistic: If you want to simulate a realistic DDoS attack and ensure your protected how many attackers should you have In 2016 the Mirai botnet is believed (by Dyn, one of its victims) to have around 100,000 members. In 2006 the Washington Post wrote that the average size was 20,000 hosts. Simulating DDoS Attacks – how many attackers is enough?īotnet sizes vary considerably.

Ips to test ddos