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  • Reuters/Thomas Peter

    One laptop can take down major internet servers

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    11.13.2016

    You don't need a massive botnet to launch overwhelming denial of service attacks -- in some cases, a personal PC and so-so broadband are all that's required. Researchers at TDC Security Operations Center have revealed a new attack technique, BlackNurse, that can take down large servers using just one computer (in this case, a laptop) and at least 15Mbps of bandwidth. Instead of bombarding a server with traffic, you send specially formed Internet Control Message Protocol packets that overwhelm the processors on server firewalls from Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and others. The firewalls end up dropping so much data that they effectively knock servers out of commission, even if they have tons of network capacity.