A Comprehensive Defense Against SYN Flood Attacks: Kernel Tuning and eBPF
In today’s digital landscape, server and network infrastructure is constantly under fire from a parade of cyber attacks. Among those, one of the most common and most damaging is the SYN Flood attack. These attacks knock services offline and end up costing businesses real money along with reputation hits. That’s why protecting our servers against this kind of threat is non-negotiable.
In this post, I’ll go through what a SYN Flood attack is and how it works in detail. I’ll also cover kernel tuning — adjusting the basic Linux kernel settings — as a first line of defense. From there, I’ll dig into how eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter), a modern and dynamic defense mechanism, lets us build advanced, programmable protection against SYN Flood attacks.