Re: Identd DoS Attacks

From: Simon Byrnand (simon@igrin.co.nz)
Date: 10/15/01 

Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20011015123939.008fe380@mail.igrin.co.nz>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 12:39:39 +1300
To: Seth Arnold <sarnold@wirex.com>, focus-linux@securityfocus.com
From: Simon Byrnand <simon@igrin.co.nz>
Subject: Re: Identd DoS Attacks

At 11:28 AM 11/10/01 -0700, Seth Arnold wrote:

>my guess is that the high load average comes because your identd is
>being run out of inetd. This causes a fork()/exec() for every incoming
>request, which is understandably causing your system a lot of trouble.
>
>I don't know the details of identd, but perhaps it would be possible to
>re-write it so that it is always running, rather than started from
>inetd.

At least one alternate ident daemon I know of - oidentd, can be configured
to run in either inetd mode, or as a standalone daemon. Presumably the
standalone mode has a much lower system impact under high load. The ident
daemon that ships with Redhat 6.2 is also a daemon instead of being inetd
based....

Regards,
Simon

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