other operating-system configurations. For example, most
firewalls can be configured to restrict the number of simultaneous
connections from any individual IP address or network, thus
- preventing a range of simple attacks.</p>
+ preventing a range of simple attacks. Of course this is no help
+ against Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS).</p>
<p>There are also certain Apache HTTP Server configuration
settings that can help mitigate problems:</p>
<ul>
<li>The <directive module="core">TimeOut</directive> directive
should be lowered on sites that are subject to DoS attacks.
- Setting this to as low as a few seconds may be appropriate. See
- also the <directive module="core">KeepAliveTimeout</directive>
- directive and various timeout-related directives provided by
- different modules.</li>
+ Setting this to as low as a few seconds may be appropriate.
+ As <directive module="core">TimeOut</directive> is currently
+ used for several different operations, setting it to a low value
+ introduces problems with long running CGI scripts.</li>
+
+ <li>The <directive module="core">KeepAliveTimeout</directive>
+ directive may be also lowered on sites that are subject to DoS
+ attacks. Some sites even turn off the keepalives completely via
+ <directive module="core">KeepAlive</directive>, which has of course
+ other drawbacks on performance.</li>
+
+ <li>The values of various timeout-related directives provided by
+ other modules should be checked.</li>
<li>The directives
<directive module="core">LimitRequestBody</directive>,
<li>The use of a threaded <a href="../mpm.html">mpm</a> may
allow you to handle more simultaneous connections, thereby
- mitigating DoS attacks. Further, the <module>event</module> mpm
+ mitigating DoS attacks. Further, the experimental
+ <module>event</module> mpm
uses asynchronous processing to avoid devoting a thread to each
- connection.</li>
+ connection. At the current point of time this
+ is work in progress and not fully implemented. Especially the
+ <module>event</module> mpm is currently incompatible with
+ <module>mod_ssl</module> and other input filters.</li>
<li>There are a number of third-party modules available through
<a