Denial-of-Service Attacks
Background
DoS attacks are designed to prevent legitimate use of a service. Attackers achieve this by flooding a network with more traffic than it can handle. Examples of this include:
• Saturating network resources, thereby preventing users from using network resources.
• Disrupting connections between two computers, preventing communications between services.
• Preventing a particular individual from accessing a service.
• Disrupting services to a specific system or client.
DoS attacks flood a remote network with an enormous amount of protocol packets. Routers and servers eventually become overloaded by attempting to route or handle each packet. Within minutes, network activity exponentially rises and the network stops responding to normal traffic and service requests from clients. This is also known as a network saturation attack or bandwidth consumption attack. Attackers strike with various tools, including Trin00 and Tribe Flood Network (TFN, TFN2K).
Types of Denial-of-Service Attacks