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T1498.002 is denial of service by amplification: small spoofed queries to open DNS, NTP or memcached services that reflect multiplied traffic at the target. Misconfigured cloud workloads make excellent reflectors. DCV flags participating instances through GuardDuty findings such as Backdoor:EC2/DenialOfService.UdpOnTcpPorts and UnusualProtocol, the traffic shapes reflection abuse produces, and checks the protective side through the Shield-related Config rule set under Firewall Manager. Closing open resolvers and unauthenticated UDP services removes most of the reflector population.
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target. This type of Network DoS takes advantage of a third-party server intermediary that hosts and will respond to a given spoofed source IP address. This third-party server is commonly termed a reflector. An adversary accomplishes a reflection attack by sending packets to reflectors with the spoofed address of the victim. Similar to Direct Network Floods, more than one system may be used to conduct the attack, or a botnet may be used. Likewise, one or more reflectors may be used to focus traffic on the target. This Network DoS attack may also reduce the availability and functionality of the targeted system(s) and network.
Reflection attacks often take advantage of protocols with larger responses than requests in order to amplify their traffic, commonly known as a Reflection Amplification attack. Adversaries may be able to generate an increase in volume of attack traffic that is several orders of magnitude greater than the requests sent to the amplifiers. The extent of this increase will depending upon many variables, such as the protocol in question, the technique used, and the amplifying servers that actually produce the amplification in attack volume. Two prominent protocols that have enabled Reflection Amplification Floods are DNS and NTP, though the use of several others in the wild have been documented. In particular, the memcache protocol showed itself to be a powerful protocol, with amplification sizes up to 51,200 times the requesting packet.
Platforms: Windows, IaaS, Linux, macOS.
DCV maps 8 detections across 1 cloud provider to T1498.002. Coverage by source:
| Source | Cloud | Findings mapped | Avg confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS GuardDuty | AWS | 5 | 0.90 |
| AWS Config Rules | AWS | 3 | 0.85 |
CloudSigma has coverage metadata for 8 T1498.002 rules across 3 platforms. The linked platform page remains the canonical rule surface; this page will embed an example after a rule clears the public embed bar.
CloudSigma has coverage metadata for T1498.002, but no public example rule clears the embed bar for this page yet. Generate a fresh starting-point rule in CloudSigma from the relevant advisory or threat-research input, then validate it against your local telemetry before enabling it in production.
T1498.002 is denial of service by amplification: small spoofed queries to open DNS, NTP or memcached services that reflect multiplied traffic at the target. Misconfigured cloud workloads make excellent reflectors. DCV flags participating instances through GuardDuty findings such as Backdoor:EC2/DenialOfService.UdpOnTcpPorts and UnusualProtocol, the traffic shapes reflection abuse produces, and checks the protective side through the Shield-related Config rule set under Firewall Manager. Closing open resolvers and unauthenticated UDP services removes most of the reflector population.
DCV maps 8 cloud-native detections to T1498.002 across 1 cloud providers, drawn from AWS Config Rules and AWS GuardDuty.
T1498.002 is part of MITRE ATT&CK TA0040 Impact: How adversaries disrupt or destroy systems and data.
CloudSigma ships 3 validated Sigma rules for T1498.002 across AWS CloudTrail, Azure Activity and GCP Audit Logs. Each rule is validated against its source SIEM dialect before publication.