NTP

October 21, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Cisco Identifies Multiple Vulnerabilities in Network Time Protocol daemon (ntpd)

1 min read

Cisco is committed to improving the overall security of the products and services our customers rely on. As part of this commitment, Cisco assesses the security of software components used in our products. Open source software plays a key role in many Cisco products and as a result, ensuring the security of open source software […]

January 24, 2014

PERSPECTIVES

Enterprise Security: Include DDoS Mitigation in your 2014 Plans

2 min read

2014 will be a pivotal year for Enterprise Security professionals. Large scale Denial of Service ( DoS ) and Distributed Denial of Service attacks ( DDoS ) have been increasing over the years, which is nothing new. As technology evolves, including faster machines and cheaper bandwidth, attacks will also evolve just as fast if not […]

January 10, 2014

SECURITY

When Network Clocks Attack

3 min read

In October 2013, Cisco TRAC discussed Network Time Protocol (NTP) as a possible vector for amplified distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Litnet CERT has since revealed that their NTP servers were used in a denial of service (DoS) attack. Symantec also published information regarding an NTP amplification-based DDoS attack that occurred in December 2013. On December 7, 2013, a hackforums.net user posted an NTP amplification DDoS script to Pastebin. The NTP DDoS script is heavily obfuscated Perl, though the plain text at the top credits the "leaking" of the script to an individual who goes by the handle Starfall. Brian Krebs also mentioned someone going by the name Starfall as a paying user of booter.tw. They may be the same person.