Detecting DoS / DDoS Attack on a Windows 2003 / 2008 Server

How do I detect a DDOS (Distributed denial of service) / DOS attack on a Windows Server 2003 / 2000 / 2008, XP, Vista or Windows 7? Can I use Linux netstat command syntax to detect DDoS attacks?

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

You can always use netstat command to get list of connections under Windows. Open command prompt by visiting Start > Run > Type "cmd" in box.

netstat is a command line utility which displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections in a system. Type the following command to see all connections:

netstat -noa

Where,

1. n: Displays active TCP connections, however, addresses and port numbers are expressed numerically and no attempt is made to determine names.
2. o: Displays active TCP connections and includes the process ID (PID) for each connection. You can find the application based on the PID on the Processes tab in Windows Task Manager.
3. a: Displays all active TCP connections and the TCP and UDP ports on which the computer is listening.

You can use find command as filter to searches for a specific string of text in a file. In the following example you are filtering out port 80 traffic:

netstat -ano | find /c "80"

Find the IP address which is causing maximum number of connection and block it using Cisco firewall or IPSec. Another protective measurement is to harden the TCP/IP stack.

Further readings:

• More information about DDoS
• FIND and NETSTAT command help pages

Get Detailed Information About Particular IP address Connections Using netstat

netstat command and shell pipe feature can be used to dig out more information about particular IP address connection. You can find out total established connections, closing connection, SYN and FIN bits and much more. You can also display summary statistics for each protocol using netstat.

This is useful to find out if your server is under attack or not. You can also list abusive IP address using this method.
# netstat -nat | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Output:

1 CLOSE_WAIT
      1 established)
      1 Foreign
      3 FIN_WAIT1
      3 LAST_ACK
     13 ESTABLISHED
     17 LISTEN
    154 FIN_WAIT2
    327 TIME_WAIT

Dig out more information about a specific ip address:
# netstat -nat |grep {IP-address} | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

2 LAST_ACK
      2 LISTEN
      4 FIN_WAIT1
     14 ESTABLISHED
     91 TIME_WAIT
    130 FIN_WAIT2

Busy server can give out more information:
# netstat -nat |grep 202.54.1.10 | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Output:

15 CLOSE_WAIT
  37 LAST_ACK
  64 FIN_WAIT_1
  65 FIN_WAIT_2
1251 TIME_WAIT
3597 SYN_SENT
5124 ESTABLISHED

Get List Of All Unique IP Address

To print list of all unique IP address connected to server, enter:
# netstat -nat | awk '{ print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sed -e '/^$/d' | uniq

To print total of all unique IP address, enter:
# netstat -nat | awk '{ print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sed -e '/^$/d' | uniq | wc -l

Output:

449

Find Out If Box is Under DoS Attack or Not

If you think your Linux box is under attack, print out a list of open connections on your box and sorts them by according to IP address, enter:
# netstat -atun | awk '{print $5}' | cut -d: -f1 | sed -e '/^$/d' |sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Output:

1 10.0.77.52
      2 10.1.11.3
      4 12.109.42.21
      6 12.191.136.3
.....
...
....
    13 202.155.209.202
     18 208.67.222.222
     28 0.0.0.0
    233 127.0.0.1

You can simply block all abusive IPs using iptables or just null route them.

Get Live View of TCP Connections

You can use tcptrack command to display the status of TCP connections that it sees on a given network interface. tcptrack monitors their state and displays information such as state, source/destination addresses and bandwidth usage in a sorted, updated list very much like the top command.

Display Summary Statistics for Each Protocol

Simply use netstat -s:
# netstat -s | less
# netstat -t -s | less
# netstat -u -s | less
# netstat -w -s | less
# netstat -s

Output:

Ip:
    88354557 total packets received
    0 forwarded
    0 incoming packets discarded
    88104061 incoming packets delivered
    96037391 requests sent out
    13 outgoing packets dropped
    66 fragments dropped after timeout
    295 reassemblies required
    106 packets reassembled ok
    66 packet reassembles failed
    34 fragments failed
Icmp:
    18108 ICMP messages received
    58 input ICMP message failed.
    ICMP input histogram:
        destination unreachable: 7173
        timeout in transit: 472
        redirects: 353
        echo requests: 10096
    28977 ICMP messages sent
    0 ICMP messages failed
    ICMP output histogram:
        destination unreachable: 18881
        echo replies: 10096
Tcp:
    1202226 active connections openings
    2706802 passive connection openings
    7394 failed connection attempts
    47018 connection resets received
    23 connections established
    87975383 segments received
    95235730 segments send out
    681174 segments retransmited
    2044 bad segments received.
    80805 resets sent
Udp:
    92689 packets received
    14611 packets to unknown port received.
    0 packet receive errors
    96755 packets sent
TcpExt:
    48452 invalid SYN cookies received
    7357 resets received for embryonic SYN_RECV sockets
    43 ICMP packets dropped because they were out-of-window
    5 ICMP packets dropped because socket was locked
    2672073 TCP sockets finished time wait in fast timer
    441 time wait sockets recycled by time stamp
    368562 delayed acks sent
    430 delayed acks further delayed because of locked socket
    Quick ack mode was activated 36127 times
    32318597 packets directly queued to recvmsg prequeue.
    741479256 packets directly received from backlog
    1502338990 packets directly received from prequeue
    18343750 packets header predicted
    10220683 packets header predicted and directly queued to user
    17516622 acknowledgments not containing data received
    36549771 predicted acknowledgments
    102672 times recovered from packet loss due to fast retransmit
    Detected reordering 1596 times using reno fast retransmit
    Detected reordering 1 times using time stamp
    8 congestion windows fully recovered
    32 congestion windows partially recovered using Hoe heuristic
    19 congestion windows recovered after partial ack
    0 TCP data loss events
    39951 timeouts after reno fast retransmit
    29653 timeouts in loss state
    197005 fast retransmits
    186937 retransmits in slow start
    131433 other TCP timeouts
    TCPRenoRecoveryFail: 20217
    147 times receiver scheduled too late for direct processing
    29010 connections reset due to unexpected data
    365 connections reset due to early user close
    6979 connections aborted due to timeout

Display Interface Table

You can easily display dropped and total transmitted packets with netstat for eth0:
# netstat --interfaces eth0

Output:

Kernel Interface table
Iface       MTU Met    RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eth0       1500   0  2040929      0      0      0  3850539      0      0      0 BMRU

Other netstat related articles / tips:

1. Get Information about All Running Services Remotely
2. Linux / UNIX Find Out What Program / Service is Listening on a Specific TCP Port

Read following man pages for the details:
$ man netstat
$ man cut
$ man awk
$ man sed
$ man grep