Final answer:
To counteract reflection attacks, implementing rate limiting is effective as it restricts the volume of traffic an attacker can use to overwhelm a system. While firewalls and IPS can help guard against a variety of threats, they are not specifically tailored to handle reflection attacks with loops as effectively as rate limiting.
Step-by-step explanation:
Countermeasure to Reflection Attack with Loop
A reflection attack involves an attacker sending a request to a public server with a spoofed source IP address. This server then sends a large amount of data to the victim's system, overwhelming it, and potentially causing a denial of service. To counteract reflection attacks, various strategies may be employed.
- Firewalls are a network security system that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules. While firewalls can provide a layer of protection against many types of attacks, they might not be specifically designed to mitigate reflection attacks with loops.
- Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are devices or software applications that monitor a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. An IPS may help to counter reflection attacks by identifying and blocking malicious packets.
- Rate limiting can effectively prevent reflection attacks by limiting the rate at which responses are sent to potential spoofed IP addresses, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the attack.
- DNS filtering can be used to prevent reflection attacks by blocking requests to known malicious domain names or by validating requests to ensure they are not part of an attack.
Among these options, rate limiting is commonly used as a countermeasure to reflection attacks with loop since it directly limits the ability of the attacker to overwhelm the system with a high volume of traffic.