0

I have multiple devices - a Samsung and a Lenovo tab, an Amazon Alexa, an HP laptop running Windows 7, and another running Windows 10. Bored, I tried to DoS my Windows 10 laptop using my Windows 7 laptop. I did it using a batch file with the ping command, like so:

:loop ping 192.168.0.1 -l 65500 -w 100 -n 1 goto :loop

A very primitive and basic way of trying it indeed. So I open about 30 command prompts running the same batch file all at once. This method worked quite well for my TP-Link router and other devices mentioned above, except for my Windows 10 laptop. It seems to have some sort of protection against the attack. It was quite literally unaffected.

Note that I was on the same network and did it using my Windows 7 laptop, and attacking the router cut off internet access for all other devices on the network as well.

Why exactly did this work on other devices, and not specifically on Windows 10?

What firewall rules and other mitigation measures does Windows 10 have in the above example that rendered it virtually immune to this simple yet effective DoS?

Improve this question
1
  • You're sending about 300 packets per second and 65kB per packet. That's 20MB/second. That's not a huge amount of traffic. Medium-fast internet can go faster than that. Copying a file from one computer to another definitely goes faster than that. Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 17:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

You assume that it's a software difference that enabled the Win10 box to survive. But the devices that fell have much reduced hardware. You likely just flooded the CPU/memory of the IoT devices and tablets. They are not designed for even small levels of direct traffic to them. A Windows laptop is.

When playing with network traffic you need to run packet captures to gain insight. Otherwise, you're just guessing in the dark.

Improve this answer
8
  • Thanks!, so that's what it was all - hardware? Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 4:28
  • 1
    I have no idea. My point is that you jumped to the conclusion that it was something specific to Windows 10. I'm saying that there are a lot of factors to consider. The most obvious being hardware that isn't designed to accept incoming traffic. Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 7:12
  • Isn't a router designed to accept and handle traffic? Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 14:45
  • 2
    @nobody yes, but most routers still have pretty minimal hardware, and they need the hardware resources to process that network traffic just like anything else. This makes them more vulnerable to DoS. This "fancy" netgear router: netgear.com/home/products/networking/wifi-routers/R7000.aspx has a dual core 1GHZ processor with 256MB of RAM. Compare that with, say, an iPhone, and the difference is quite striking. Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 14:54
  • 1
    @nobody home routers aren't typically designed to handle traffic to it on the LAN-side. Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 15:38

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.