• 👉 Overview
• 👀 What ?
• 🧐 Why ?
• ⛏️ How ?
• ⏳ When ?
• ⚙️ Technical Explanations
• 🖇️ References

👉 Overview

👀 What ?

A Cookie Bomb is a type of attack where an attacker floods a server with large HTTP cookies in an attempt to overwhelm the server's buffers and cause a denial of service (DoS).

🧐 Why ?

Understanding how a Cookie Bomb works is important because it helps in building robust server architectures that can withstand such attacks. It is also crucial in identifying and mitigating such attacks in a timely manner.

⛏️ How ?

To implement a defense against a Cookie Bomb, one could limit the size of cookies accepted by the server, implement a rate limit on incoming requests, or use a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter out malicious requests.

⏳ When ?

Cookie Bomb attacks have been used since the early days of the internet, but they have become more relevant with the proliferation of web services and applications in recent years.

⚙️ Technical Explanations

In a Cookie Bomb attack, the attacker sends HTTP requests with unusually large cookies, which are typically used to store session information. When the server tries to process these large cookies, it may run out of buffer space, leading to a denial of service. This is a type of buffer overflow attack. To mitigate such attacks, servers can be configured to accept only cookies of a certain maximum size. Additionally, a rate limit can be implemented to limit the number of requests a single IP can send in a given time period. Lastly, a Web Application Firewall can be used to detect and block suspicious requests, such as those with unusually large cookies.

🖇️ References