A UDP flood attack is a type of attack by denial of service (DoS), which consists of flooding a target (server, network, etc.) with a large number of UDP (User Datagram Protocol) packets.
The aim is to overwhelm the target, consume its resources and make it unavailable to legitimate users.
- CATEGORY : 🔴 Denial of service (DoS) attack
- FREQUENCY : 🔥🔥🔥🔥
- DANGEROUS : 💀💀💀
- DIFFICULTY OF ERADICATION : 🧹🧹🧹
How the attack works
- The attacker sends a large number of UDP packets to the target, often spoofing the source IP address to make the attack more difficult to trace.
- The target tries to process each packet, which consumes its resources (bandwidth, CPU, memory).
- If the volume of packets is high enough, the target is overwhelmed and can no longer respond to legitimate requests.
UDP protocol :
- UDP is a connectionless communication protocol, which means that it does not establish a connection before sending data.
- This makes it faster than TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), but also less reliable.
💥 Consequences
- Unavailability of services: legitimate users can no longer access services hosted by the target
- Network saturation: the attack can saturate network bandwidth, affecting other services
- Performance slowdown: target performance can be considerably slowed down
🛡️Attenuation
- Flow limitation limit the number of UDP packets that can be sent by a source IP address
- Traffic filtering block UDP packets from suspect IP addresses
- Use of protection solutions DDoS these solutions can detect and mitigate UDP flood attacks in real time
