National Anti-DDoS Coalition members attack one another!
No punches pulled in security drill
Members of the National Anti-DDoS Coalition recently met for their biannual security drill, which involves mounting vigorous attacks on one another's ICT systems. The Coalition was founded in 2018. We are one of the members, and the others include government agencies, internet access providers, internet exchanges, academic centres, non-profit organisations and banks. Coalition members work together to protect themselves and the wider community against the threat posed by DDoS attacks. One way we do that is by organising practice drills twice a year.
Blue against red
Preparations for the evening begin long in advance of the drill. Each participating organisation decides which systems to attack, and how. The 'red team' is responsible for the attack, and the 'blue team' for defence. The motto of the exercise is "test your anti-DDoS measures before others do it for you". The test attacks therefore target real systems, not dummy systems in a test environment. The targets for the drill are selected by the organisation and the operators in advance. So, although they are real systems, they are attacked under controlled circumstances. If serious problems arise – if the red team comes up with some clever tactics that prove very successful, for example – the defenders can contact the game leaders and ask for the attack to be stopped.
Better in a drill than in real life
ICT Architect Marc Groeneweg oversaw SIDN's involvement in the drill. "You know an attack's coming," he says, "but not exactly where your infrastructure will be hit, or how hard. It's very instructive to experience an attack and to see how much your systems can cope with before they go down. It's impossible to prevent that happening, but how heavy an attack can your systems withstand? And what can you do to fend attacks off? It's much better to discover the answers in a drill than in real life."
Exams
As things worked out, the cans of Red Bull and bottles of Club Mate weren't needed to keep everyone awake. Both teams were pumped with adrenalin throughout the drill. Everyone was treating the exercise as an exam that they were determined to pass. Either by making sure that their systems' defences were rock solid, or by coming up with such fiendishly clever attack strategies that no system would be safe. No one was pulling any punches!
On to the next drill
"The semi-annually drill is really valuable for gaining experience. Sometimes you come out of it feeling proud of what you've done, but other times it exposes your shortcomings. Either way, we take away experiences that we use to improve the resilience of our infrastructure," says Bert ten Brinke, CISO at SIDN. "Once again, the commitment of all the participants made the exercise a big success. We all learn from each other, so that together we improve the resilience of each other's services."
Want to take part in the next cybersecurity drill? Mail info@nomoreddos.org for more information about joining the National Anti-DDoS Coalition.
What's a DDoS attack?
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack involves a network of computers all sending huge amounts of data to a server at the same time. Unable to process the tsunami of incoming data, the targeted servers either are forced offline for a while, or become virtually unreachable for legitimate users. So, for example, people might be temporarily unable to use DigiD or access an internet banking service. Infrastructure such as bridges and traffic installations that rely on internet-connected (industrial) computers can be affected as well. It's therefore very important that such assets are resilient.
What is the National Anti-DDoS Coalition?
The National Anti-DDoS-Coalitie is group of organisations that work together to protect themselves from DDoS attacks. Its members include government bodies, internet access providers, internet exchanges, academic centres, non-profit organisations and banks. The members pool their expertise to investigate DDoS attacks from various angles, and to develop ways of defending themselves and making their services as resilient as possible.