Potential DHCP Starvation via High Client MAC Cardinality
Identifies a burst of DHCP DISCOVER messages with an unusually high number of distinct client hardware addresses observed on the same capture segment within a short window. Attackers flood DISCOVER requests with…
Description
Identifies a burst of DHCP DISCOVER messages with an unusually high number of distinct client hardware addresses observed on the same capture segment within a short window. Attackers flood DISCOVER requests with spoofed or random MAC addresses to exhaust the DHCP lease pool, often as a precursor to deploying a rogue DHCP server.
Detection logic
Its licence does not clear it for publishing here
Sunturai publishes a detection's own text where the licence it arrived under has been reviewed and permits it, and Elastic License 2.0 has not. The query as its source wrote it, its canonical form and the hash that pins this revision are in the workspace record.
Detection requirements
- Platform
- ContainersIaaSLinuxmacOSWindows
The rule states no platform. This is derived from the ATT&CK technique it maps to.
MITRE ATT&CK mappings
1 exclusive technique.This is coverage no other published rule has; it is not this rule's total technique count.
References
| Reference | Cited by |
|---|---|
| attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1498/ | Only this detection cites it |
| wazuh.com/blog/monitoring-dhcp-starvation-attack-with-suricata-and-wazuh/ | Only this detection cites it |
| www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/tunnelvision | 2 |
From the source
- At source
- Open at source
- Upstream identifier
- b5f94e78-fb4d-4f4b-879e-e51ea667d09c
- Tagged by the source as
- Data Source: Network Packet CaptureData Source: Network TrafficDomain: NetworkNoise: UnknownPerformance: FastResources: Investigation GuideRule Type: ES|QLTactic: ImpactUse Case: Network Security MonitoringUse Case: Threat Detection
Licence
- Published under
- Elastic License 2.0Read the licence
- Attribution
- Required
Authorship
- Written by
- Published
- Sep 20, 2026
- Version
- 3