Harden-IT is not for people who are new to computers, but was created more for anyone who works professionally in IT. The “beauty” of this program is seen mainly during TCP transmission states and a denial of service attack (DoS). To briefly explain, during a denial of service attack, the SYNs will cause numerous TCP sessions to open, and prevent regular users from accessing. The server will respond with a SYN-ACKS being transmitted back, but since it is an attack, ACK messages are not transmitted in response. Therefore during a DoS attack, Harden-IT will quickly reduce the amount of SYNs that have lined up, making it possible for true TCP users to receive service.
Harden-IT also has the ability to:
- Monitors and reports how many TCP connections during a DoS attack that normally will cause more TCP connections to be created.
- Disables IP source routing that hackers use to find out information about a network
- Evaluates the amount of server connections during the SYN-RCVD status
- It also has the ability to maintain a TCP connection by sending “keep alive” packets of data to the server.
- Determines the elapsed time between a TCP connection before no response is received and the connection is closed.
- Prevents an attacker from accessing the system using a remote server.
- Prevents an attacker from accessing information on the system when they use a “name release” command.
- Disables the ability of a hacker to add new remote entries
However, this is just a small amount of the capabilities of Harden-It. It can block address-sharing, monitor how a browser is being used, and restricts anonymous users.
