Fortinet manual IPS operation before synflood threshold is reached

Models: IPS

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SYN flood attacks

The FortiGate IPS Response to SYN flood attacks

A true SYN proxy approach requires that all three packets (SYN, SYN/ACK, and ACK) are cached and replayed even before it is known if a TCP connection request is legitimate. The FortiGate IPS pseudo SYN proxy retransmits every TCP packet immediately from the packet source to the packet destination as soon as it records the necessary information for SYN flood detection.

Since the pseudo SYN proxy in the IPS uses a “best effect” algorithm to determine whether a TCP connection is legitimate or not, some legitimate connections may be falsely detected as incomplete TCP connection requests and dropped.

However, the ratio of the pseudo SYN proxy dropping legitimate TCP connection is quite small.

Figure 16 illustrates the operational behavior of the FortiGate IPS Engine before the SYN Flood threshold is reached. Figure 17 illustrates the operation behavior of the FortiGate IPS Engine after the SYN Flood threshold is reached.

Figure 16: IPS operation before syn_flood threshold is reached

Figure 17: IPS operation after syn_flood threshold is reached

FortiGate IPS User Guide Version 3.0 MR7

 

01-30007-0080-20080916

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Page 53
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Fortinet manual IPS operation before synflood threshold is reached