[ncolug] LinkSys and DoS
- From: Chuck Stickelman <cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:15:28 -0400
No... not DOS as in Disk Operating System... DoS as in Denial of Service...
Recently I purchased a new LinkSys 802.11g router/WAP/switch. All was
going well until a few days ago, when none of the wireless laptops could
maintain a connection. We'd reboot the box and have a few minutes of
useful connectivity, then back to the link going down >90% of the time.
I didn't seem to matter how close to the device the we were located.
The link just wouldn't stay up. And when it was connected it'd be at 1
or 5 Mbps...
At the same time we noticed that all of the connections would all drop
at the same time, and come back up at the same time. Weird.
Well, yesterday I found the problem. I have a hand-me-down Apple
LaserWriterPro printer. The printer does not have a LAN connection, so
it is connected to the LAN via a Lantronix LPS1-T print server (a
cigarette box sized device that connects to the Centronics connector of
the printer. The LPS1-T runs some BSD variant...) I happened to notice
that the LAN LED was solid Red, which indicates a high number of
collisions. I rebooted the LPS1 and the printer, the LED showed normal
activity.
Th great news is that the LinkSys is now working OK!! It looks like the
LPS1 was causing so much traffic that the LinkSys box was effectively a
brick!!
The moral of the story is that DoS attacks may not be attacks at all,
and they can come from within...
Now all I have to do is figure out why this happens and how to prevent
it from happening again...
Chuck
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