Chapter 31 ADP

the initiator responds with an ACK (acknowledgment). After this handshake, a connection is established.

Figure 309 TCP Three-Way Handshake

A SYN flood attack is when an attacker sends a series of SYN packets. Each packet causes the receiver to reply with a SYN-ACK response. The receiver then waits for the ACK that follows the SYN-ACK, and stores all outstanding SYN-ACK responses on a backlog queue. SYN-ACKs are only moved off the queue when an ACK comes back or when an internal timer ends the three-way handshake. Once the queue is full, the system will ignore all incoming SYN requests, making the system unavailable for other users.

Figure 310 SYN Flood

LAND Attack

In a LAND attack, hackers flood SYN packets into a network with a spoofed source IP address of the network itself. This makes it appear as if the computers in the network sent the packets to themselves, so the network is unavailable while they try to respond to themselves.

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ZyWALL USG 50 User’s Guide