Ispmanager 6 lite, pro, host documentation

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DDoS protection

DDoS protection

DDoS is a cyber-attack in which an attacker floods a server or a resource with numerous requests to overload it and make it unavailable for other requests.

In ispmanager, you can enable DDoS-protection using a web-server. Protection can be configured if you are using Nginx or OpenLiteSpeed.

Nginx blocks access to the server from an IP-address completely, while OpenLiteSpeed limits the bandwidth for an IP.

Enabe DDoS-protection

To enable the DDoS protection tool, open the Site edit form, select the Enable DDoS protection checkbox and specify its parameters:

  • Nginx:
    1. Number of Requests per second from one IP address — if this parameter is exceeded, the IP address is blocked for 5 minutes.
    2. Maximum peak attack size — the number of requests per second above which new requests are blocked.
  • OpenLiteSpeed:
    1. Number of Requests per second from one IP address — if this parameter is exceeded, the bandwidth for the IP address is limited.
    2. Bandwidth, bytes/sec — the bandwidth for the IP address. The actual throughput may be slightly higher than this setting. The value will be rounded in 4 Kb increments. To not limit the speed, enter 0.

For more information please refer to the article Add a website.

Technical details for Nginx

The ngx_http_limit_req_module module allows limiting the rate of requests by the specified key or requests from a certain IP address.

How it works 

The module creates a zone for every domain and specifies the maximum peak attack size (burst). Extra requests are delayed until their number exceed the maximum peak. The request is terminated with error 503 (Service Temporarily Unavailable). 

The settings are added into  /conf.d/isplimitreq.conf:

Nginx configuration file

limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=<WWW-domain name>:<zone size> rate=<requests per second>r/s
Comments

In  /vhosts-resources/:

Nginx configuration file

limit_req zone=<WWW-domain name> burst=<Maximum peak attack size>;
error_page 503 =429 @blacklist;
Details

The location @blacklist section is created in  /vhosts-includes/blacklist-nginx.conf with the following contents:

Nginx configuration file

location @blacklist {
proxy_redirect off ;
proxy_pass https://<IP address>:<port>;
rewrite (.*) /mancgi/ddos break;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X_ISP_FIREWALLSEC <key for ISPmanager>;

IP address blocking 

If the request limit is exceeded: 

  1.  The IP address that receives requests is sent to the /mancgi/ddos script. The script blocks the IP for 5 minutes. 
  2. The system blocks IP addresses using iptables for IPv4, ip6tables fro IPv6, and ipset.
Note: ipset is not available on OpenVZ. Therefor, you can use only tools provided by Nginx

The following rule is created in iptables

DROP       all  --  anywhere             anywhere            match-set ispmgr_limit_req src

The following rule is created in ip6tables:

ip6tables

DROP       all  --  anywhere             anywhere            match-set ispmgr_limit_req6 src


ispmgr_limit_req and ispmgr_limit_req6 with the following parameters are added into ipset  hash:ip (IP address) and timeout 300 (block time is seconds).

The following record is added into the /usr/local/mgr5/var/ddos.log log:

Block log

WARNING Address (<IP address>) is blacklisted

Execute the command to check the list contents:

ipset -L ispmgr_limit_req

The "Members" filed of the command output will show blacklisted IPs and the time until unblocking.

Edit the block period

To change the block period, perform the following steps:

1. Add the following parameter to the ISPmanager configuration file (the default location is  /usr/local/mgr5/etc/ispmgr.conf):

ISPmanager configuration file

isp_limitreq_timeout <block period in seconds>

2. In iptables find the number of the ispmgr_limit_req src rule:

iptables -L INPUT --line-numbers

3. Delete the rule:

iptables -D INPUT <rule number>

4. In ip6tables find the number of the ispmgr_limit_req6 src rule:

ip6tables -L INPUT --line-number

5. Delete the rule: 

ip6tables -D INPUT <rule number>

6. Delete the rules from ipset:

ipset destroy ispmgr_limit_req
ipset destroy ispmgr_limit_req6

7. Update the firewall rules in ispmanager:

/usr/local/mgr5/sbin/mgrctl -m ispmgr firewall

 

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