NAME

     blackhole — a sysctl(8) MIB for manipulating behaviour in respect of refused SCTP, TCP, or
     UDP connection attempts

SYNOPSIS

     sysctl net.inet.sctp.blackhole[={0 | 1 | 2}]
     sysctl net.inet.tcp.blackhole[={0 | 1 | 2}]
     sysctl net.inet.udp.blackhole[={0 | 1}]

DESCRIPTION

     The blackhole sysctl(8) MIB is used to control system behaviour when connection requests are
     received on SCTP, TCP, or UDP ports where there is no socket listening.

     The blackhole behaviour is useful to slow down an attacker who is port-scanning a system in
     an attempt to detect vulnerable services.  It might also slow down an attempted denial of
     service attack.

   SCTP
     Setting the SCTP blackhole MIB to a numeric value of one will prevent sending an ABORT
     packet in response to an incoming INIT.  A MIB value of two will do the same, but will also
     prevent sending an ABORT packet when unexpected packets are received.

   TCP
     Normal behaviour, when a TCP SYN segment is received on a port where there is no socket
     accepting connections, is for the system to return a RST segment, and drop the connection.
     The connecting system will see this as a “Connection refused”.  By setting the TCP blackhole
     MIB to a numeric value of one, the incoming SYN segment is merely dropped, and no RST is
     sent, making the system appear as a blackhole.  By setting the MIB value to two, any segment
     arriving on a closed port is dropped without returning a RST.  This provides some degree of
     protection against stealth port scans.

   UDP
     Enabling blackhole behaviour turns off the sending of an ICMP port unreachable message in
     response to a UDP datagram which arrives on a port where there is no socket listening.  It
     must be noted that this behaviour will prevent remote systems from running traceroute(8) to
     a system.

WARNING

     The SCTP, TCP, and UDP blackhole features should not be regarded as a replacement for
     firewall solutions.  Better security would consist of the blackhole sysctl(8) MIB used in
     conjunction with one of the available firewall packages.

     This mechanism is not a substitute for securing a system.  It should be used together with
     other security mechanisms.

SEE ALSO

     ip(4), sctp(4), tcp(4), udp(4), ipf(8), ipfw(8), pfctl(8), sysctl(8)

HISTORY

     The TCP and UDP blackhole MIBs first appeared in FreeBSD 4.0.

     The SCTP blackhole MIB first appeared in FreeBSD 9.1.

AUTHORS

     Geoffrey M. Rehmet