We have studied in class how to use a variety of "slow" attacks to do a DoS attack on Web Servers. These attacks include SlowLoris, RUDY, Slow Reads etc. Perhaps the easiest such attack is SlowLoris. Recall that in this attack, a client sets up a connection to the server, starts a valid HTTP Get request, and then keeps sending headers (including junk headers) every so often, without finishing.

This ties up a server thread. If we tie up all server threads, we've dosed the server! This project has two parts. For both, you need to have a vulnerable version of HTTPD running in a VM. The stuff you get by default (typically 2.4.7 these days) will resist these attacks, especially on Linux distros.

You will research to find out which versions of HTTPD are vulnerable to these attacks, or whether the current versions can be made vulnerable by tinkering with their parameters and modules. In a different VM, you will need to run the attack. The VMs can both be on your own machine in host only mode networking. In the first part of the attack, I want you to download a tool called slowhttptest. aptget install slowhttptest should do the trick in Ubuntu.

Now run the four built in attacks against your server. Vary the number of threads available for your server, and see what parameters you have to adjust in the attack to succeed. Log these parameters. Also verify if the new httpd server is immune to these attacks. In the second part, I want you to understand and then code a client for the the slowloris attack. One is built into the slowhttptest utility, and its code is freely available. There are other implementations as well.

The intent is NOT for you to copy this code and paste it in! I want you to understand the attack and write it yourself in your favourite language. Feel free to look at the existing code for help, but acknowledge that explicitly in your readme by saying what parts you coded yourself and where you had help. It is OK to discuss the high level elements of the code with your friends, but not the code itself. Before you proceed, please remember the discussion in the very first class around Ethics.

This is only to be done on the resources that have been assigned for this project . Please do not try this on any other machine. If you do this on any live network, you're probably breaking several criminal statutes that attract strict penalties.