Re: [cobalt-security] Ddos Prevention thru Throttleing

[Jaana Jarve <netcat@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Jamie - i-Dot wrote:

> I would like to lock down a few users aswell, who run some perl scripts,
> which have the 'potential' to be used to resource starve the box...

yup, it only takes one malicious or simply clueless cgi user to DoS your
box. it is very simple. it's a wonder it doesn't happen all the time
(deducing from a singular lack of posts on Cobalt lists on this subject).
or perhaps this is what all those unsolved "box suddenly stops responding" posts are.
unless you happen to watch top at the same time you'd never catch the
user.

cgiwrap has resource limiting capabilities. it would make a lot of sense
to use them. unfortunately, it looks like rlimit support was not enabled
on the Cobalt install of cgiwrap.

if anyone has successfully recompiled cgiwrap, without breaking anything,
pointers would be most welcome.



rgds,
netcat