OIT to block UDP and TCP 19 ports on Aug. 30

Due to recent service abuse, OIT Security and Compliance has decided to block incoming Internet traffic on ports UDP and TCP 19 on Thursday, Aug. 30.

These ports are used by the old Character Generator Protocol (CHARGEN) service, which is intended for debugging, testing and measurement, but is now more likely to be abused in smurf-style denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

An analysis of network traffic for the last 45 days shows no hosts depending on these ports and a significant rise in attacks to campus hosts still running CHARGEN. 

For more information, please see the SysNews post. Please direct all questions to oitsecurity@ncsu.edu.