What is a syn attack ?

[suzy]

Hi Guys
I keep getting warnings from my McAffee that it has blocked a syn attack. I am getting quite a lot of these and I am wondering if anybody knows what these are, and should I be doing something about them. I have clicked the trace option and once it came up with my servers head office the other time it would not give any details.

Many thanks
Suzy

[Darkman]

It's a type of denial of service attack by keeping the server engaged. I doubt this is really happening, it's possibly just Mcafee miss-diagnosing some network traffic.

http://www.asianlaws.org/cyberlaw/library/cc/cc_tt.htm

The SYN attack on the other hand involves the three-way handshake of the TCP/IP protocol. First the client sends a SYN packet to the server. Then the server responds with a SYN-ACK. When the client responds to this, only then does the client-server conversation really start. Now in a SYN attack the client does not respond to the SYN-ACK. It waits till just before the service time expires and then sends another request. This way the server machine remains engaged. The above given process keeps on getting repeated till the server machine crashes.


HTH

[suzy]

Darkman
Thanks everso for the help, I was beginning to think I was being hacked or something but I am now reassured.

love
Suzy x

[gooner]

Some pieces of software tend to cause people to fret when they have no need to - however the majority of the time it is worth having such software and to be worried about nothing than to worry about something