Network Congestion Solution for FTP Services Based on Distributed Firewall and Snort

Abstract

The exploit of network traffic has become common due to the increased flow of web traffic from services like Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and others. The number of cyberattacks has grown therefore they require different information about a target with the purpose of intimidating, blackmailing or harassing a person or a company. Servers of different industries, including medical and dental organizations, have become a good source of information for cyber criminals, due to the huge information stored across years. Besides compromised health data, another problem with huge impact is congestion of a network. If a network of database servers is overcrowded, the result is high delays in obtaining the information of a patient that needs urgent medical care. In this paper, an overview of traffic generated by a network simulator during a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood is presented, also a solution to this type of network attack, consisting in a custom firewall rule, that obtains significant improvements in the network resources usage. The solution is implemented to prove the necessity of improving the security of FTP.