Verify DDOS attack with netstat command on Linux Terminal

DDOS attack is a common thing in web hosting. As you are aware, these kind of attacks will slow down the server.

netstat -na

This display all active Internet connections to the server and only established connections are included.

netstat -an | grep :80 | sort

Show only active Internet connections to the server on port 80, this is the http port and so it’s useful if you have a web server, and sort the results. Useful in detecting a single flood by allowing you to recognize many connections coming from one IP.

netstat -n -p|grep SYN_REC | wc -l

This command is useful to find out how many active SYNC_REC are occurring on the server. The number should be pretty low, preferably less than 5. On DoS attack incidents or mail bombs, the number can jump to pretty high. However, the value always depends on system, so a high value may be average on another server.

netstat -n -p | grep SYN_REC | sort -u

List out the all IP addresses involved instead of just count.

netstat -n -p | grep SYN_REC | awk ‘{print $5}’ | awk -F: ‘{print $1}’

List all the unique IP addresses of the node that are sending SYN_REC connection status.

netstat -ntu | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Use netstat command to calculate and count the number of connections each IP address makes to the server.

netstat -anp |grep ‘tcp|udp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

List count of number of connections the IPs are connected to the server using TCP or UDP protocol.

netstat -ntu | grep ESTAB | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

Check on ESTABLISHED connections instead of all connections, and displays the connections count for each IP.

netstat -plan|grep :80|awk {‘print $5’}|cut -d: -f 1|sort|uniq -c|sort -nk 1

Show and list IP address and its connection count that connect to port 80 on the server. Port 80 is used mainly by HTTP web page request.

How to mitigate a DOS attack

Installing firewall application like CSF will help to prevent both brute-force and ddos attack up-to a limit. In order to get the steps to install CSF please click the following link.