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MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1498.002: Reflection Amplification

Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target. This type of Network DoS takes advantage of a third-party server intermediary that hosts and will respond to a given spoofed source IP address. This third-party server is commonly termed a reflector. An adversary accomplishes a reflection attack by sending packets to reflectors with the spoofed address of the victim. Similar to Direct Network Floods, more than one system may be used to conduct the attack, or a botnet may be used. Likewise, one or more reflectors may be used to focus traffic on the target.[1] This Network DoS attack may also reduce the availability and functionality of the targeted system(s) and network.

Reflection attacks often take advantage of protocols with larger responses than requests in order to amplify their traffic, commonly known as a Reflection Amplification attack. Adversaries may be able to generate an increase in volume of attack traffic that is several orders of magnitude greater than the requests sent to the amplifiers. The extent of this increase will depending upon many variables, such as the protocol in question, the technique used, and the amplifying servers that actually produce the amplification in attack volume. Two prominent protocols that have enabled Reflection Amplification Floods are DNS[2] and NTP[3], though the use of several others in the wild have been documented.[4] In particular, the memcache protocol showed itself to be a powerful protocol, with amplification sizes up to 51,200 times the requesting packet.[5]

EnterpriseT1498.002Sub-techniqueObject v1.4Modified
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Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

T1498.002: Reflection Amplification describes Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target. This type of Network DoS takes advantage of a third-party server intermediary that hosts and will respond to a given spoofed source IP address. This third-party server is commonly termed a reflector. An adversary accomplishes a reflection attack by sending packets to reflectors with the spoofed address of the victim. Similar to Direct Network Floods, more than one system may be used to conduct the ...

Executive priority

T1498.002: Reflection Amplification is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.

Technical view

Security teams should validate T1498.002: Reflection Amplification by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (impact), supported platforms (Windows, IaaS, Linux, macOS), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

  • Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
  • Cloud control-plane, SaaS audit, and container platform logs
  • Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry

Detection direction

  • Validate whether T1498.002: Reflection Amplification appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
  • Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
  • Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.

Mitigation priorities

  • Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
  • Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
  • Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits

Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.

This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Reflection Amplification

Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target. This type of Network DoS takes advantage of a third-party server intermediary that hosts and will respond to a given spoofed source IP address. This third-party server is commonly termed a reflector. An adversary accomplishes a reflection attack by sending packets to reflectors with the spoofed address of the victim. Similar to Direct Network Floods, more than one system may be used to conduct the attack, or a botnet may be used. Likewise, one or more reflectors may be used to focus traffic on the target.[1] This Network DoS attack may also reduce the availability and functionality of the targeted system(s) and network.

Reflection attacks often take advantage of protocols with larger responses than requests in order to amplify their traffic, commonly known as a Reflection Amplification attack. Adversaries may be able to generate an increase in volume of attack traffic that is several orders of magnitude greater than the requests sent to the amplifiers. The extent of this increase will depending upon many variables, such as the protocol in question, the technique used, and the amplifying servers that actually produce the amplification in attack volume. Two prominent protocols that have enabled Reflection Amplification Floods are DNS[2] and NTP[3], though the use of several others in the wild have been documented.[4] In particular, the memcache protocol showed itself to be a powerful protocol, with amplification sizes up to 51,200 times the requesting packet.[5]

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

How security teams should use this page

Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.

ATT&CK relationship table

Related techniques

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

1 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1498Network Denial of ServiceThis object subtechnique of Network Denial of Service.
Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

mitigates · MitigationM1037: Filter Network TrafficEnterprisesubtechnique of · TechniqueT1498: Network Denial of ServiceEnterprisedetects · Detection StrategyDET0408: Detection Strategy for Reflection Amplification DoS (T1498.002)Enterprise
Mitigations

Mitigation direction

MitigationEnterprise

M1037: Filter Network Traffic

Employ network appliances and endpoint software to filter ingress, egress, and lateral network traffic. This includes protocol-based filtering, enforcing firewall rules, and blocking or restricting traffic based on predefined conditions to limit adversary movement and data exfiltration. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures:

Ingress Traffic Filtering:

- Use Case: Configure network firewalls to allow traffic only from authorized IP addresses to public-facing servers. - Implementation: Limit SSH (port 22) and RDP (port 3389) traffic to specific IP ranges.

Egress Traffic Filtering:

- Use Case: Use firewalls or endpoint security software to block unauthorized outbound traffic to prevent data exfiltration and command-and-control (C2) communications. - Implementation: Block outbound traffic to known malicious IPs or regions where communication is unexpected.

Protocol-Based Filtering:

- Use Case: Restrict the use of specific protocols that are commonly abused by adversaries, such as SMB, RPC, or Telnet, based on business needs. - Implementation: Disable SMBv1 on endpoints to prevent exploits like EternalBlue.

Network Segmentation:

- Use Case: Create network segments for critical systems and restrict communication between segments unless explicitly authorized. - Implementation: Implement VLANs to isolate IoT devices or guest networks from core business systems.

Application Layer Filtering:

- Use Case: Use proxy servers or Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to inspect and block malicious HTTP/S traffic. - Implementation: Configure a WAF to block SQL injection attempts or other web application exploitation techniques.

Change history

Object version and sync metadata

The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.

ATT&CK release
19.2
Object version
1.4
Created
Modified
Raw hash
a0c8db516e7661ee...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
19.21.4Current bundlea0c8db516e76…
19.11.4Older bundlea0c8db516e76…
Raw source

Mirrored ATT&CK source object

The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.

Open mirrored raw JSONOpen MITRE-hosted copy
Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    Cloudflare ReflectionDoS May 2017

    Marek Majkowsk, Cloudflare. (2017, May 24). Reflections on reflection (attacks). Retrieved April 23, 2019.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Cloudflare DNSamplficationDoS

    Cloudflare. (n.d.). What is a DNS amplification attack?. Retrieved April 23, 2019.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    Cloudflare NTPamplifciationDoS

    Cloudflare. (n.d.). What is a NTP amplificaiton attack?. Retrieved April 23, 2019.

    Open source URL
  4. [4]
    Arbor AnnualDoSreport Jan 2018

    Philippe Alcoy, Steinthor Bjarnason, Paul Bowen, C.F. Chui, Kirill Kasavchnko, and Gary Sockrider of Netscout Arbor. (2018, January). Insight into the Global Threat Landscape - Netscout Arbor's 13th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report. Retrieved April 22, 2019.

    Open source URL
  5. [5]
    Cloudflare Memcrashed Feb 2018

    Marek Majkowski of Cloudflare. (2018, February 27). Memcrashed - Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211. Retrieved April 18, 2019.

    Open source URL
  6. [6]
    Cisco DoSdetectNetflow

    Cisco. (n.d.). Detecting and Analyzing Network Threats With NetFlow. Retrieved April 25, 2019.

    Open source URL
  7. [7]
    mitre-attackT1498.002
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

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