What is a Denial Of Service Attack (DOS)?

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What is a Denial Of Service Attack (DOS)?

A Denial Of Service Attack (DOS) attack is a type of cyber attack in which a malicious actor aims to render a computer or other device unavailable to its intended users by interrupting the device's normal functioning. DOS attacks typically function by overwhelming or flooding a targeted machine with requests until normal traffic is unable to be processed, resulting in Denial Of Service to additional users. A DOS attack is characterized by using a single computer to launch the attack.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack is a type of DOS attack that comes from many distributed sources, such as a botnet DDOS attack.

A Denial Of Service (DOS) attack is an attack meant to shut down a machine or network, making it inaccessible to its intended users. DOS attacks accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic or sending it information that triggers a crash. In both instances, the DOS attack deprives legitimate users (i.e. employees, members, or account holders) of the service or resource they expected.

Victims of DOS attacks often target web servers of high-profile organizations such as banking, commerce, and media companies, or government and trade organizations. Though DOS attacks do not typically result in the theft or loss of significant information or other assets, they can cost the victim a great deal of time and money to handle.

DOS attacks are 2 Types:

   1. Buffer overflow attacks

An attack type in which a memory buffer overflow can cause a machine to consume all available hard disk space, memory, or CPU time. This form of exploit often results in sluggish behavior, system crashes, or other deleterious server behaviors, resulting in denial of service.

   2. Flood attacks

By saturating a targeted server with an overwhelming amount of packets, a malicious actor is able to oversaturate server capacity, resulting in denial-of-service. In order for most DoS flood attacks to be successful, the malicious actor must have more available bandwidth than the target.

There are two general methods of DOS attacks: flooding services or crashing services. Flood attacks occur when the system receives too much traffic for the server to buffer, causing them to slow down and eventually stop. Popular flood attacks include:

• Buffer overflow attacks: The most common DOS attack. The concept is to send more traffic to a network address than the programmers have built the system to handle. It includes the attacks listed below, in addition to others that are designed to exploit bugs specific to certain applications or networks
• ICMP flood: Leverages misconfigured network devices by sending spoofed packets that ping every computer on the targeted network, instead of just one specific machine. The network is then triggered to amplify the traffic. This attack is also known as the smurf attack or ping of death.
• SYN flood: Sends a request to connect to a server, but never completes the handshake. Continues until all open ports are saturated with requests and none are available for legitimate users to connect to.

Other DOS attacks simply exploit vulnerabilities that cause the target system or service to crash. In these attacks, the input is sent that takes advantage of bugs in the target that subsequently crash or severely destabilize the system so that it can’t be accessed or used.

An additional type of DOS attack is the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. A DDOS attack occurs when multiple systems orchestrate a synchronized DOS attack to a single target. The essential difference is that instead of being attacked from one location, the target is attacked from many locations at once. The distribution of hosts that defines a DDOS provide the attacker multiple advantages:

• He can leverage the greater volume of machines to execute a seriously disruptive attack.
• The location of the attack is difficult to detect due to the random distribution of attacking systems.
• It is more difficult to shut down multiple machines than one.
• The true attacking party is very difficult to identify, as they are disguised behind many systems.

Modern security technologies have developed mechanisms to defend against most forms of DOS attacks, but due to the unique characteristics of DDOS, it is still regarded as an elevated threat and is of higher concern to organizations that fear being targeted by such an attack.

How can you tell if a computer is experiencing a DOS attack?

While it can be difficult to separate an attack from other network connectivity errors or heavy bandwidth consumption, some characteristics may indicate an attack is underway.

Indicators of a DOS attack include:

• A typically slow network performance such as long load times for files or websites
• The inability to load a particular website such as your web property
• A sudden loss of connectivity across devices on the same network

What is the difference between a DDOS attack and a DOS attack?

The distinguishing difference between DDOS and DOS is the number of connections utilized in the attack. Some DOS attacks, such as “low and slow” attacks like Slow-loris, derive their power in the simplicity and minimal requirements needed to them be effective.

DOS utilizes a single connection, while a DDOS attack utilizes many sources of attack traffic, often in the form of a botnet. Generally speaking, many of the attacks are fundamentally similar and can be attempted using one more many sources of malicious traffic.

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