Bug ID 1596409: Low thresholds for tcp-ack-ts vector caused outage after upgrade to v17.1

Last Modified: Mar 25, 2025

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP Install/Upgrade, TMOS(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
17.1.0, 17.1.0.1, 17.1.0.2, 17.1.0.3, 17.1.1, 17.1.1.1, 17.1.1.2, 17.1.1.3, 17.1.1.4, 17.1.2, 17.1.2.1, 17.5.0

Opened: Jun 14, 2024

Severity: 3-Major

Symptoms

After an upgrade from v15 or v16 to v17.1, you may encounter service outages caused by low thresholds for the TCP ACK (TS) DoS vector.

Impact

These low thresholds trigger frequent DoS attack detections, leading to disruptions in service.

Conditions

The upgrade process retains old threshold values (Detection EPS Threshold: 200, Mitigation EPS Threshold: 100), which are too low compared to the new defaults.

Workaround

Change the threshold to the new defaults or or any reasonable values accordingly. For example: #tmsh modify security dos device-config dos-device-config dos-device-vector { tcp-ack-ts {default-internal-rate-limit 300000 detection-threshold-pps 200000}}

Fix Information

None

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips