Previously Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> Because the kernel is turning them on automatcally if (and only if) the
> kernel recognices a SYN Attack ("possible SYN flooding on port %d. Sending
> cookies.").
That's not true. From Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt:
tcp_syncookies - BOOLEAN
Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES
Send out syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket
overflows. This is to prevent against the common 'syn flood attack'
Default: FALSE
Note, that syncookies is fallback facility.
It MUST NOT be used to help highly loaded servers to stand
against legal connection rate. If you see synflood warnings
in your logs, but investigation shows that they occur
because of overload with legal connections, you should tune
another parameters until this warning disappear.
See: tcp_max_syn_backlog, tcp_synack_retries, tcp_abort_on_overflow.
syncookies seriously violate TCP protocol, do not allow
to use TCP extensions, can result in serious degradation
of some services (f.e. SMTP relaying), visible not by you,
but your clients and relays, contacting you. While you see
synflood warnings in logs not being really flooded, your server
is seriously misconfigured.
Wichert.
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