Preparation

1 Identification
2 Containment
3
Objective: Establish contacts, define procedures, Objective: Detect the incident, determine its Objective: Mitigate the attack’s effects on the
and gather information to save time during an scope, and involve the appropriate parties. targeted environment.
attack.
Analyze the attack  If the bottleneck is a particular feature of an application,
Internet Service Provider support  Understand the logical flow of the DDoS attack and identify temporarily disable that feature.
 Contact your ISP to understand the DDoS mitigation services the infrastructure components affected by it.
it offers (free and paid) and what process you should follow.
 Understand if you are the target of the attack or a collateral  Attempt to throttle or block DDoS traffic as close to the
 If possible, subscribe to a redundant Internet connection. victim network’s “cloud” as possible via a router, firewall, load
 Establish contacts with your ISP and law enforcement entities.  Review the load and log files of servers, routers, firewalls, balancer, specialized device, etc.
Make sure that you have the possibility to use an out-of-band applications, and other affected infrastructure.
communication channel (e.g.: phone).
 Identify what aspects of the DDoS traffic differentiate it from  Terminate unwanted connections or processes on servers
Inventory benign traffic and routers and tune their TCP/IP settings.
 Create a whitelist of the IP addresses and protocols you must - Source IP addresses, AS, etc
allow if prioritizing traffic during an attack. Don’t forget to include - Destination ports
your critical customers, key partners, etc. - URLs  If possible, switch to alternate sites or networks using DNS
 Document your IT infrastructure details, including business - Protocols flags or another mechanism. Blackhole DDoS traffic targeting the
owners, IP addresses and circuit IDs, routing settings (AS, etc); original IP addresses.
prepare a network topology diagram and an asset inventory. Network analysis tools can be used to review the traffic
ÎTcpdump, Tshark, Snort, Argus, Ntop, Aguri, MRTG
Network infrastructure  Set up an alternate communication channel between you
 Harden the configuration of network, OS, and application  If possible, create a NIDS signature to focus to differentiate
and your users/customers (e.g.: web server, mail server, voice
components that may be targeted by DDoS. between benign and malicious traffic.
server, etc.)
 Baseline your current infrastructure’s performance, so you can
identify the attack faster and more accurately. Involve internal and external actors
 Contact your internal teams to learn about their visibility into  If possible, route traffic through a traffic-scrubbing service or
 If your business is Internet dependent, consider purchasing product via DNS or routing changes (e.g.: sinkhole routing)
specialized DDoS mitigation products or services. the attack.

 Confirm DNS time-to-live (TTL) settings for the systems that  Contact your ISP to ask for help. Be specific about the traffic
might be attacked. Lower the TTLs, if necessary, to facilitate DNS you’d like to control:  Configure egress filters to block the traffic your systems
redirection if the original IP addresses get attacked. 600 is a good - Network blocks involved may send in response to DDoS traffic (e.g.: backsquatter traffic),
TTL value. - Source IP addresses to avoid adding unnecessary packets to the network.
 Depending of the criticality of your services, consider setting-
- Protocols
up a backup that you can switch on in case of issue.  Notify your company’s executive and legal teams.
 In case of an extortion attempt, try to buy time with the
Internal contacts fraudster. For example, explain that you need more time in
 Establish contacts for your IDS, firewall, systems, and network Check the background order to get management approval.
teams.  Find out whether the company received an extortion
demand as a precursor to the attack.
 Collaborate with the business lines to understand business
implications (e.g., money loss) of likely DDoS attack scenarios.  Search if anyone would have any interest into threatening
If the bottleneck is at the ISP’s side, only the
your company ISP can take efficient actions. In that case, work
 Involve your BCP/DR planning team on DDoS incidents.
closely with your ISP and make sure you share
The “preparation” phase is to be considered as the most - Competitors information efficiently.
important element of a successful DDoS incident response. - Ideologically-motivated groups (hacktivists)
- Former employees
 Remediation
4 Aftermath
6 Incident Response Methodology
Objective: Take actions to stop the Denial of Objective: Document the incident’s details,
Service condition. discuss lessons learned, and adjust plans and
defences.
 Contact your ISP and make sure that it enforces
remediation measures. For information, here are  Consider what preparation steps you could IRM #4
some of the possible measures: have taken to respond to the incident faster or
more effectively. DDoS incident response
- Filtering (if possible at level Tier1 or 2) Guidelines to handle Distributed Denial of Service incidents
- Traffic-scrubbing/Sinkhole/Clean-pipe  If necessary, adjust assumptions that affected ___________________________________________________
- Blackhole Routing the decisions made during DDoS incident IRM Author: CERT SG / Vincent Ferran-Lacome
preparation. IRM version: 1.3
 If the DDoS sponsors have been identified,
consider involving law enforcement.  Assess the effectiveness of your DDoS E-Mail: [email protected]
This should be performed upon the direction of response process, involving people and Web: http://cert.societegenerale.com
your company’s executive and legal teams. communications. Twitter: @CertSG

 Consider what relationships inside and outside

Technical remediation actions can mostly be
your organizations could help you with future
enforced by your ISP.
incidents. Abstract
 Collaborate with legal teams if a legal action is This Incident Response Methodology is a cheat sheet dedicated
in process. to handlers investigating on a precise security issue.
Who should use IRM sheets?
Recovery
5 •
•
•
Administrators
Security Operation Center
CISOs and deputies
• CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Team)
Objective: Come back to the previous
functional state. Remember: If you face an incident, follow IRM, take notes
and do not panic. Contact your CERT immediately if
needed.
Assess the end of the DDoS condition
 Ensure that the impacted services are
reachable again.
 Ensure that your infrastructure performance is Incident handling steps
back to your baseline performance.
6 steps are defined to handle security Incidents

Rollback the mitigation measures J Preparation: get ready to handle the incident
J Identification: detect the incident
 Switch back traffic to your original network. J Containment: limit the impact of the incident
J Remediation: remove the threat
 Restart stopped services. J Recovery: recover to a normal stage
J Aftermath: draw up and improve the process
Ensure that the recovery-related actions are IRM provides detailed information for each step.
decided in accordance with the network teams.
Bringing up services could have unexpected
side effects. This document is for public use