SYN Flood Demonstration Tool

A lightweight tool demonstrating TCP SYN flood attack for network security research and education.

📋 Overview

This tool demonstrates the SYN flood attack technique, a form of denial-of-service (DoS) attack that exploits the TCP three-way handshake. It sends a continuous stream of TCP SYN packets with randomized source IP addresses to a target system, potentially exhausting its connection resources.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: This tool is developed for educational and research purposes only. Using this tool against systems without explicit permission is illegal and unethical.

🔍 Features

• Send TCP SYN packets with randomized source IP addresses
• Configurable target IP address and port
• Adjustable packet transmission rate
• Real-time statistics display (packets sent, duration, rate)
• Clean termination with Ctrl+C, showing final statistics

🛠️ Requirements

• Linux operating system
• GCC compiler
• Root privileges (required for raw socket operations)

🚀 Installation

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Moh-Gebril/syn-flood.git
cd syn-flood

Build from source

make

This will create the executable in the bin/ directory.

Optional: Install system-wide

make install

📖 Usage

sudo ./bin/syn_flood <destination_ip> <port> [packet_delay_ms]

Arguments

• destination_ip: Target IP address
• port: Target port number (1-65535)
• packet_delay_ms: Optional delay between packets in milliseconds (default: 0)

Example

sudo ./bin/syn_flood 192.168.1.1 80 5

This will start a SYN flood demonstration against 192.168.1.1 on port 80 with a 5ms delay between packets.

📊 Output

The tool provides real-time statistics during execution:

[INFO] Starting SYN flood attack on 192.168.1.1:80
[INFO] Press Ctrl+C to stop the attack
[INFO] Packets sent: 5000 | Duration: 25 seconds | Rate: 200.00 pps

🧰 Project Structure

.
├── bin/                  # Compiled binary directory
├── build/                # Object files directory
├── headers/              # Header files
│   ├── ip_header.h       # IP header structure
│   ├── network_utils.h   # Network utility functions
│   └── tcp_header.h      # TCP header structure
├── main.c                # Main implementation file
├── network_utils.c       # Network utility implementations
├── LICENSE               # MIT License
├── Makefile              # Build system
└── README.md             # This file

🧠 Educational Context

This project demonstrates concepts including:

• TCP/IP protocol manipulation
• Raw socket programming
• Network packet construction
• Checksums and packet integrity
• Denial-of-service attack vectors

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgements

This project was inspired by the SEED Labs project (https://seedsecuritylabs.org/), which provides hands-on laboratory exercises for computer security education.

👤 Author

Mohamed Gebril

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⚠️ Disclaimer: This tool is intended for educational purposes only. Use responsibly and only on systems you own or have permission to test. Unauthorized DoS attacks are illegal and unethical.