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The distributed Denial of Service (DoS) Simulation Module from Mu
allows characterization of the effects on a service when stateless
traffic is sent at user specified rates. Any service will stop
responding at some point due to resource exhaustion. This could occur
due to a malicious attack or even due to inadvertent usage spikes in
the service. It is often difficult for testers to proactively create
these scenarios in the lab and profile the behavior of the service with
accuracy. With IP services it becomes necessary for the tester to test
for DoS scenarios, even at the application layer where one sees a high
degree of customization.
Mu’s DoS module allows testers to create tests rapidly from a rich set of inputs:
- Using their own content
- Using community generated content (e.g. from www.pcapr.net). Testers can dynamically generate DoS attacks from any pcap on www.pcapr.net.
- Using Mu-provided content
Mu’s DoS module lets you precisely identify the characteristics of the
service in the face of a DoS scenario not only at the lowest network
protocol level, but with custom or standard application level
interactions as well. Using this module, three critical aspects of the
service can be identified.
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Identify the weakest link of the service. It enables
testers to focus on elements that comprise the service and monitor the
effects of a distributed DoS test on each of these elements. A rich set
of monitors including protocol and SNMP monitors can be used for this.
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It lets the tester identify the exact
point at which the service element causes the service to degrade.
Testers can custom craft the test content and also specify the rate and
pattern of the DoS test. Moreover, they can also choose randomize parts
of the message headers or payloads and this makes the DoS test
extremely realistic. The randomization capability also causes traffic
to flow through the soft-path on the target and this will expose
previously unknown weaknesses to surface.
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Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the
tester can determine if the service comes back gracefully after the DoS
test is stopped. This allows the tester to determine if the service is
designed to act in an elastic fashion or if it is more plastic. If it
is the latter then it informs the tester that there may be serious
network design implications with regards to redundancy and scale that
need to be considered.
Remediation Toolkit
In addition to
finding issues, the Mu helps fix the issues found by providing testers
with remediation assets that can be used by engineers. These assets can
be sent to developers so that issues are replicated and fixed rapidly.
Examples of the remediation assets are packet captures, test
documentation and standalone Linux executables that replicate test
traffic.
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