DDoS Protection With IPtables

This guide will cover protection from TCP-based attacks. Most UDP-based attacks are amplified reflection attacks that will exhaust the network interface card of any common server.

IPtables Tables

Filter: The filter table is the default and most commonly used table that rules go to if you don’t use the -t (–table) option.
Nat: This table is used for Network Address Translation (NAT). If a packet creates a new connection, the nat table gets checked for rules.
Mangle: The mangle table is used to modify or mark packets and their header information.
Raw: This table’s purpose is mainly to exclude certain packets from connection tracking using the NOTRACK target.

IPtables Chains

PREROUTING: raw, nat, mangle
Applies to packets that enter the network interface card (NIC)

INPUT: filter, mangle
Applies to packets destined to a local socket

FORWARD: filter, mangle
Applies to packets that are being routed through the server

OUTPUT: raw, filter, nat, mangle
Applies to packets that the server sends (locally generated)

POSTROUTING: nat, mangle
Applies to packets that leave the server

Most TCP-based DDoS attack types use a high packet rate, meaning the sheer number of packets per second is what causes the server to go down. That’s why you want to make sure that you can process and block as many packets per second as possible. You’ll find that most if not all guides on how to block DDoS attacks using iptables use the filter table and the INPUT chain for anti-DDoS rules. The issue with this approach is that the INPUT chain is only processed after the PREROUTING and FORWARD chains and therefore only applies if the packet doesn’t match any of these two chains.

This causes a delay in the filtering of the packet which consumes resources. In conclusion, to make our rules as effective as possible, we need to move our anti-DDoS rules as far up the chains as possible.The first chain that can apply to a packet is the PREROUTING chain, so ideally we’ll want to filter the bad packets in this chain already. However, the filter table doesn’t support the PREROUTING chain. To get around this problem, we can simply use the mangle table instead of the filter table for our anti-DDoS iptables rules. It supports most if not all rules that the filter table supports while also supporting all iptables chains.

Kernel Optimization Settings to Mitigate DDoS

Anti-DDoS Kernel Settings (sysctl.conf)

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kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7 
kernel.panic = 10 
kernel.sysrq = 0 
kernel.shmmax = 4294967296 
kernel.shmall = 4194304 
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1 
kernel.msgmnb = 65536 
kernel.msgmax = 65536 
vm.swappiness = 20 
vm.dirty_ratio = 80 
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5 
fs.file-max = 2097152 
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 262144 
net.core.rmem_default = 31457280 
net.core.rmem_max = 67108864 
net.core.wmem_default = 31457280 
net.core.wmem_max = 67108864 
net.core.somaxconn = 65535 
net.core.optmem_max = 25165824 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh1 = 4096 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh2 = 8192 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh3 = 16384 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_interval = 5 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_stale_time = 120 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max = 10000000 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_loose = 0 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_established = 1800 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close = 10 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_close_wait = 10 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_fin_wait = 20 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_last_ack = 20 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_recv = 20 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_syn_sent = 20 
net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_tcp_timeout_time_wait = 10 
net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle = 0 
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000 
net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc = 1 
net.ipv4.route.flush = 1 
net.ipv4.route.max_size = 8048576 
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1 
net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = htcp 
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 65536 131072 262144 
net.ipv4.udp_mem = 65536 131072 262144 
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 33554432 
net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384 
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 33554432 
net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384 
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000 
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 0 
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 400000 
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_rfc1337 = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_syn_retries = 2 
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 16384 
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_fack = 1 
net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 2 
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 10 
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 600 
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 60 
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 10 
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1 
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0 
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0 
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0 
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

Iptables Rules

1: Drop invalid packets

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROP

2: Drop TCP packets that are new and are not SYN

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp ! --syn -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j DROP

3: Drop SYN packets with suspicious MSS value

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m conntrack --ctstate NEW \ 
-m tcpmss ! --mss 536:65535 -j DROP

4: Block packets with bogus TCP flags

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,PSH,ACK,URG NONE -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN FIN,SYN -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN,RST -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags FIN,RST FIN,RST -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags FIN,ACK FIN -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ACK,URG URG -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ACK,FIN FIN -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ACK,PSH PSH -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL ALL -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL NONE -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL FIN,PSH,URG -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL SYN,FIN,PSH,URG -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL SYN,RST,ACK,FIN,URG -j DROP

5: Block spoofed packets

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 224.0.0.0/3 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 169.254.0.0/16 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 192.0.2.0/24 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 0.0.0.0/8 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 240.0.0.0/5 -j DROP 
/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -s 127.0.0.0/8 ! -i lo -j DROP

6: Drop ICMP (you usually don’t need this protocol)

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -p icmp -j DROP

7: Drop fragments in all chains

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/sbin/iptables -t mangle -A PREROUTING -f -j DROP

8: Limit connections per source IP

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/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m connlimit --connlimit-above 111 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset

9: Limit RST packets

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/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags RST RST -m limit --limit 2/s --limit-burst 2 -j ACCEPT 
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP

10: Limit new TCP connections per second per source IP

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/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -m limit --limit 60/s --limit-burst 20 -j ACCEPT 
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j DROP