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The Hunter arrived on the wall of the fortress on the frontier out of breath. He had ridden through the night to get to the most active and dangerous part of the assault on the Kingdom’s walls. He leaned over the parapet and quickly surveyed the chaos below him. Within seconds an arrow whizzed past his head and he leaned back to the relative safety of the ramparts. With a deep breath he strode forward to take another look – this time watching the angles of attack. The ground below the high, stone wall of the fortress was a cleared field of earth. The area had been emptied of all vegetation to give defenders clear site. Two hundred yards from the wall was a line of dense fir trees. Smoke from fires set by the attackers drifted in front of the trees obscuring any visibility. In front of the trees was a row of hay bales shielding a line of archers armed with long bows. Every time one of the defenders peeked over the wall several bows would launch razor sharp arrows in their direction. A corresponding volley of arrows would answer from the walls. The Hunter watched as the attackers expertly coordinated their movements. Arrows would keep the defenders busy while teams of workers constructed siege weapons. Two large trebuchets had already been positioned on a ridge just inside the tree line. Squads of men were pushing large stones towards the siege weapons. Other teams worked on a siege tower. He felt a presence behind him and turned. A woman, dressed for battle in a golden breastplate and rich red cape, stood a few feet behind him inspecting the scene as well. “Greetings, Hunter.” She said in a quiet voice – calm despite the bedlam raging around them. The wind whipped her grey hair across her face. She coolly brushed it from her eyes and smiled graciously at him. “And to you, my lady.” The Hunter bowed slightly. The woman standing before the Hunter was known well throughout the Kingdom. Her name was spoken in reverent hushed tones but she was most often referred to as “The Eye of the Storm.” Her tenure on the King’s inner circle was longstanding due to her uncanny ability to remain calm no matter the catastrophe. As an advisor to the King she handled some of the most crucial and devastating crises the Kingdom had ever seen. Hence her moniker spoke to the fact that at the most treacherous and violent times in the Kingdom, she stood in the midst of pandemonium tranquil and in control. “Quite a panorama, don’t you think.” She stated simply. “I do not recollect seeing such precision amongst a horde before. Every movement is coordinated, timed perfectly and executed with purpose.” “Yes, my lady.” The Hunter turned and studied the horizon. “They have hit every major bastion fortress on the frontier. They also dammed several of the waterways leading into the fortresses from the frontier – hindering our water supplies. Not only do we have this land attack but I have received reports of pirate vessels harassing incoming merchant ships off the coast. I couldn’t have planned a more destructive attack myself.” “That is an impressive assessment – coming from you. No one knows our defenses and how things are connected as you do.” “You know they will never breach our defenses.” She smiled confidently. “We are more prepared than they know. But we must learn from this. This is something special.” With a sweep of her cape, she turned quickly to address some of the more alarmed defenders who seemed to be overwhelmed with the situation. The Hunter gazed at her composure, admiring how quickly she soothed the guards and turned them to the tasks at hand. ***** Marty wiped moisture from his brow and wondered how he could be sweating when all he was doing was sitting in a chair typing. Greg sat in the adjacent cubicle, working through his own set of command consoles, a phone perched on his shoulder. “Yeah, I know.” Greg muttered into the phone. “I realize the logs are filling up quickly but you need to save them off so we can unravel this stuff.” Marty could hear the complaining on the other end of the line. “Just do it.” Greg rebuffed. “I’ll call back in 30 minutes.” Greg snapped the phone from his shoulder. He stood up, peered over the cube wall at Marty and rolled his eyes. Marty stopped and smiled. For as annoying as Greg could be, he knew his stuff and got things done. “Where we at?” Marty asked. Greg launched into his summary. “So far the proxy and firewall rules are helping out. We are dropping more connections – probably some actual customers are getting annoyed at the delays – but the application traffic is being handled. The network load balancing has been optimized and seems to finally be managing. Our pipes in Asia still seem to have some issues. Carl said he was tracking that down. I think it had to do with the ISP at this point. How about you?” “I talked with Dave. He briefed the execs on this. Apparently several were having issues on the VPNs from their homes and were pissed off. Dave settled them down and got them up to speed. The DR plans had to be activated for the web infrastructure so the IT admins were all over that. The warm site was able to take on most of the load. DNS redirection has been enabled. The ISP techs had to do some wizardry upstream but we got it in place. So all in all – I think we are at a good place now.” The phone rang and Greg ducked back into his cube sweeping the handset off the base. “Uh huh. Yep. No problem.” Greg grunted a goodbye and replaced the phone just in time for it to ring again. He scooped it up again and listened intently. Marty rubbed his eyes and reached for his Mountain Dew. The empty can lifted easily. Another dead soldier, Marty thought and he pitched the can towards the wastebasket. The can dinged off the basket – already full with empty soda cans and pizza boxes. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. The worst was over. Traffic was dwindling and it seemed as if the denial of service attack was coming to a close. Meanwhile, a lone employee sat quietly in a cubicle in the remote parts of the IT Support department staring at his workstation. Tasked with monitoring application logs during the network storm, he was closing in on the last few minutes of his shift. Wearily he put on his coat in preparation for the drive home. His desktop dinged with an incoming email. What now, he thought. Clicking the newly arrived mail, he read the subject through blurred eyes. —————————— From: Admin@maestro-01.webhosting.xserva.net Subject: Application verification Greetings, I was working with your network team during the recent DDOS attack. They asked me to send this link in to Support once we saw traffic loads go down. I think they wanted you to check to make sure our application server came back up. http://maestro-01.webhosting.xserva.net/index/siren.php Thanks. ———————————– The weary tech clicked the link and a browser window popped open. “Application Server responding. No action necessary” displayed in bright red letters. The tech shrugged, activated his desktop screen saver and walked towards the exit. The post E3 – Hordes at the Gate – The Battle appeared first on Speaking of Security - The RSA Blog and Podcast. |
