Understanding Session Table Flood Attacks

A successful DoS attack overwhelms its victim with such a massive barrage of false simulated traffic that it becomes unable to process legitimate connection requests. DoS attacks can take many forms—SYN flood, SYN-ACK-ACK flood, UDP flood, ICMP flood, and so on—but they all seek the same objective, which is to fill up their victim's session table.

When the session table is full, that host cannot create any new sessions and begins rejecting new connection requests. The source-based session limits screen option and the destination-based session limit screen option help mitigate such attacks.

Related Topics

• JUNOS Software Feature Support Reference for SRX Series and J Series Devices