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Denial of Service Attack
A denial of service attack or DoS is a form of violation on one’s computer resources. The attack can target an individual’s single computer or a firm bearing many computers. The attack attempts to make all computer resources unavailable to their intended users. A DoS may be intentional or malicious in nature, reflecting different means and attack motives. An intentional attack involves a company or individual’s efforts to prevent a computer service or an internet site from functioning. Note that, this form of prevention may be effected partially or fully, depending on whether the attack has been applied on a permanent or temporary basis (Fu, Chun, & Jingchao, 2010). Targets for DoS attacks are mostly high-profile websites or web servers that hold sensitive information like, banks databases and root name savers among others.
Denial of service attacks have been evidenced in many forms with the most common noted as the saturation of target machines with communication requests that emerge externally. The requests either block the machine and make it non-responsive to normal traffic or make the machine too slow to be termed available to users. Generally, DoS attacks are implemented with the primary aim of coercing target machines into a reset state or in the consumption of excessive resources thus rendering the machine as unusable. From this relation therefore, two major types of attacks are noted namely flood and crash services.
There are three basic types of DoS targets. The first type consumes computation resources such as disk space, bandwidth, processor time or random access memory. The second targets the disruption of computer configuration information like software information. Additionally, it may also disrupt state information and physical network components (Fu, Chun, & Jingchao, 2010). The third type of attack obstructs communication channels, subsequently blocking communication. In some instances, the attack will release harmful software or malware to overwork the processor and prevent any work from being executed. The malware also triggers errors in computer resources micro codes preventing specific functions from being carried out. In extreme situations, the attacks will prevent the computer from booting up; this involves the maintenance of a locked state leading to an eventual crash the operating systems.
Vast attack methods have also been identified primarily attributed to dishonorable practices from computer and information technology specialists, who have formulated many DoS attacks. Ordinary methods include ICMP flood, low rate DoS attack, the SYN flood, peer-to-peer attacks, teardrop attack, application level attacks and distributed attacks amongst others (Fu, Chun, & Jingchao, 2010). The attacks are performed using a vast variety of programs. A significant problem is that the programs are formulated, constructed and manufactured specifically for the execution of DoS attacks. Approaches incorporated with double capabilities, known as Packet injectors, are able to perform various tasks and attacks in a synchronous manner.
There are various ways of preventing and responding to DoS attacks. The most common method is the installation of firewalls. Firewalls have inflexible commands that either allow or deny routes for IP addresses, ports or protocols. Therefore, when a computer engineer or specialist identifies a DoS attack that can be blocked, the address or identifier is run through the firewall by offering non-permissive instructions. However, DoS attacks that are presently being launched have become too complex for the firewalls (Luo, Edmond, & Rocky, 2009). For instance, if the attacks focus on the port 80 of a web service, the firewalls are unable to prevent the attacks because of their inability to distinguish DoS traffic from good traffic. Other methods of prevention and response include the installation of switches, routers, intrusion prevention systems, application front-end hardware, DoS defense systems and sink pipes.
References
Fu, Y., Chun, Z., & Jingchao, W. (2010). A research on Denial of Service attack in passive RFID system. Anti-Counterfeiting Security and Identification in Communication, 2010, 24-28.
Luo, X., Edmond, W. W. C., & Rocky, K. C. C. (2009). Detecting Pulsing Denial-of-Service Attacks with Nondeterministic Attack Intervals. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 2009, 1-13.
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