Home/ATT&CK Technique/Service Exhaustion Flood
ATT&CK Technique

Service Exhaustion Flood

T1499.002 · impact

Adversaries may target the different network services provided by systems to conduct a denial of service (DoS). Adversaries often target the availability of DNS and web services, however others have been targeted as well. Web server software can be attacked through a variety of means, some of which apply generally while others are specific to the software being used to provide the service.

One example of this type of attack is known as a simple HTTP flood, where an adversary sends a large number of HTTP requests to a web server to overwhelm it and/or an application that runs on top of it. This flood relies on raw volume to accomplish the objective, exhausting any of the various resources required by the victim software to provide the service. Another variation, known as a SSL renegotiation attack, takes advantage of a protocol feature in SSL/TLS.

The SSL/TLS protocol suite includes mechanisms for the client and server to agree on an encryption algorithm to use for subsequent secure connections. If SSL renegotiation is enabled, a request can be made for renegotiation of the crypto algorithm. In a renegotiation attack, the adversary establishes a SSL/TLS connection and then proceeds to make a series of renegotiation requests.

Because the cryptographic renegotiation has a meaningful cost in computation cycles, this can cause an impact to the availability of the service when done in volume.

WindowsIaaSLinuxmacOS
◆

Actors Using This

6
russia_aligned_false_flag_hacktivismAnonymous Sudan
anonymous_offshoot_multi_ideology_driftGhostSec
ukraine_government_volunteer_offensive_operationsIT Army of Ukraine
russia_aligned_hacktivismKillnet
predominantly_english_speaking_youth_organized_crimeLAPSUS$
russia_aligned_hacktivismNoName057(16)
◈

Likely Attack Path

Techniques the same actors pair with this one distinctively - those showing up among actors who use this technique noticeably more than across all actors (lift > 1.15), grouped by kill-chain phase. The × is that lift multiplier; the shared-actor count is in the tooltip. A near-universal technique pairs with everything at baseline, so its list is short by design.
reconnaissance earlier
T1591.003 · Identify Business Tempo ×39.67T1597.001 · Threat Intel Vendors ×39.67T1597.002 · Purchase Technical Data ×39.67T1593.002 · Search Engines ×29.75T1597 · Search Closed Sources ×29.75T1591.001 · Determine Physical Locations ×23.80T1591.002 · Business Relationships ×23.80T1594 · Search Victim-Owned Websites ×23.80
resource-development earlier
T1583.005 · Botnet ×23.80
impact same
T1499.003 · Application Exhaustion Flood ×39.67T1499.001 · OS Exhaustion Flood ×39.67T1498.002 · Reflection Amplification ×33.06T1498.001 · Direct Network Flood ×24.79T1498 · Network Denial of Service ×18.03T1499.004 · Application or System Exploitation ×13.22
▣

Mitigations

1
MITRE ATT&CK mitigations - vendor-agnostic guidance for reducing exposure to this technique.
M1037Filter Network Traffic

Employ network appliances and endpoint software to filter ingress, egress, and lateral network traffic. This includes protocol-based filtering, enforcing firewall rules, and blocking or restricting traffic based on predefined conditions to limit adversary movement and data exfiltration.

Ingress Traffic Filtering
  • Use Case: Configure network firewalls to allow traffic only from authorized IP addresses to public-facing servers.
  • Implementation: Limit SSH (port 22) and RDP (port 3389) traffic to specific IP ranges.
Egress Traffic Filtering
  • Use Case: Use firewalls or endpoint security software to block unauthorized outbound traffic to prevent data exfiltration and command-and-control (C2) communications.
  • Implementation: Block outbound traffic to known malicious IPs or regions where communication is unexpected.
Protocol-Based Filtering
  • Use Case: Restrict the use of specific protocols that are commonly abused by adversaries, such as SMB, RPC, or Telnet, based on business needs.
  • Implementation: Disable SMBv1 on endpoints to prevent exploits like EternalBlue.
Network Segmentation
  • Use Case: Create network segments for critical systems and restrict communication between segments unless explicitly authorized.
  • Implementation: Implement VLANs to isolate IoT devices or guest networks from core business systems.
Application Layer Filtering
  • Use Case: Use proxy servers or Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to inspect and block malicious HTTP/S traffic.
  • Implementation: Configure a WAF to block SQL injection attempts or other web application exploitation techniques.
◈

Detection Coverage

0/6 layers
Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).
Behavioral / log (Sigma) none
Analytics (MITRE CAR) none
Runtime / container (Falco) none
File / malware (YARA) none
Network (Suricata/Snort) none
Vuln scan (Nuclei) none
▣

Comply & Defend

NIST 800-53AC-03, AC-04, CA-07, CM-06, CM-07, SC-07, SI-04, SI-10, SI-15
D3FEND11 defensive techniques
Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse
CVETechnique ActorTool Family
drag to reposition · click any node to traverse · button top-right enlarges
External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves
MITRE ATT&CKAtomic Red Teamcar (MITRE)
Vulnerabilities
CISA KEV catalog
CWE weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns
Package vulnerabilities
Threat intelligence
Threat actors
Tools & malware
ATT&CK techniques
IOCs
Detection & defense
Sigma rules
YARA rules
Atomic Red Team tests
D3FEND countermeasures
Compliance
NIST 800-53
ISO 27001:2022
SOC 2 TSC
PCI-DSS v4.0
CIS Controls v8.1
About
All capabilities
Live statistics
Data sources
Privacy policy
Terms of service
threatengine.sh  ·  Open-source threat intelligence platform  ·  100+ authoritative sources  ·  Every fact traces to its origin