A team of Chinese academics have found a new way to abuse HTTP packets to amplify web traffic and bring down websites and content delivery networks (CDNs). Named RangeAmp, this new Denial-of-Service (DoS) technique exploits incorrect implementations of the HTTP “Range Requests” attribute.
HTTP Range Requests are part of the HTTP standard and allow clients (usually browsers) to request only a specific portion (range) of a file from a server. The feature was created for pausing and resuming traffic in controlled (pause/resume actions) or uncontrolled (network congestion or disconnections) situations.
Source: ZDNet
