Potentially ongoing worldwide UDP:443 (EDT) DDoS amplify attack against Citrix (NetScaler) Gateway

Since 19 December 2020 7pm CET we see a possible worldwide DDOS amplify attack against Citrix Gateway UDP:443 DTLS EDT services.

Changelog

  • 11.01.2021: Added information about the new Citrix ADC Gateway (formerly NetScaler) firmware releases, which solve the memory leak issue with -helloVerifiyRequest
  • 24.12.2020: Added information about the official Citrix Knowledge Center article CTX289674
    Added a final summary, that repeats all possible solutions
    Maked it a lot clearer, that -helloVerifiyRequest doesn’t seem to work well
  • 22.12.2020: Added a warning note, that -helloVerifiyRequest doesn’t work on all Citrix ADC (NetScaler) firmware versions
  • 21.12.2020: Added a third possible solution regarding -helloVerifiyRequest
  • 21.12.2020: Initial version

The situation

During the night from Saturday (19.12.2020) to Sunday (20.12.2020) our Zabbix Monitoring informed us, that several Citrix Gateway VPX (50) appliances were at its license cap. We investigated the situation and soon found out, that we had 0 ICA sessions on most of them, hence no explanation for the traffic.

Zabbix Citrix Gateway Throughput Monitoring Graph
Zabbix Citrix Gateway Throughput Monitoring Graph

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