IP-based security and unified threat management (UTM) specialist, Clavister has today announced that its Security Gateway portfolio is protected against the TCP vulnerabilities used in Sockstress, the latest and potentially most devastating Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack tool.

Most DoS attacks require the hacker to have access to extensive amounts of resources and bandwidth in order to be successful with an attack. Sockstress which was recently made available to the public, is an attack tool capable of exploiting several TCP vulnerabilities in common operating systems and has the ability to make mission critical services unavailable.

Sockstress is unique in that it can deplete resources in the machines under the attack very quickly using remarkably few resources and little bandwidth. The combination of the most common operating systems being affected and the low amount of resources needed to launch a successful attack makes Sockstress extremely dangerous.

Andreas Åsander, VP product management at Clavister said: "For sometime now, Clavister has had access to the Sockstress tool which is capable of generating a number of different DoS attacks. We have performed numerous tests with this tool against our Security Gateway products and are pleased to announce that the TCP stack in our products is not affected by these attacks.”

“We have always known that our Security Gateway products offer superior levels of security and are particularly robust against DoS attacks. We were keen to evaluate Sockstress due to its potentially devastating affects and were delighted to discover that our TCP stack was unaffected.”

Clavister recommends that to protect resources on a network behind the Security Gateway from these types of attack, the SYN-relayer or any applicable ALG (HTTP, FTP etc) should be used, just as for any other DoS attack.

Clavister’s customers use its Security Gateway products as firewalls, VPN terminators, intrusion prevention systems, traffic shapers, virus blockers, content filters or any combination of the above. The products are based at the heart of security infrastructures and take advantage of a unique combination of super-granular control and seamless scalability.


For more information, please contact:
Maggie Warbrick, Vice President Marketing
+46 8 545 298 10
[email protected]

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