DoS Reflection attack using CharGen protocol

Question

I'm researching DoS Reflection attacks w/ amplification, and Wikipedia says that one of the "worst" amplification services is the Character Generator Protocol. Frankly, I have never heard of this protocol before, which leads me to my question: Is it in use today?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '15 at 16:06

In my experience, it is not used today very frequently. SSDP and TCP amplification seem to be the "trending" attack vectors.

Every widely used UDP protocol that sends unauthenticated clients responses much larger than the request will be weaponized at some point.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 27 '15 at 20:36

The Wikipedia article is fully correct. This protocol isn't very useful but one of the worst amplifier you can find on OSes and network equipments.

This is the key reason why any skilled network engineer inactivate it on any equipment and any skilled system engineer inactivate it on any OS. Hence attackers aren't too much hunting a network equipment or a computer with such a dangerous amplifier left on.

But such a use may reappear in a near future if the knowledge about this risk is forgotten.

DoS Reflection attack using CharGen protocol

2 Answers2