Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack

A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack is a cyber-attack that follows the principles of distributed system.

• Example(s):
  • Application Layer DDoS Attack,
  • Billion Laughs Attack,
  • Yo-Yo Attack,
  • …
  • Counter-Example(s):
  • IP Address Spoofing,
  • Mixed Threat Attack,
  • Upstream Filtering.
• See: Web Server, Credit Card, Payment Gateway, Revenge, Blackmail.

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References

2023

• (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack Retrieved:2023-1-22.
  • In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.

    In a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources. More sophisticated strategies are required to mitigate this type of attack, as simply attempting to block a single source is insufficient because there are multiple sources. A DoS or DDoS attack is analogous to a group of people crowding the entry door of a shop, making it hard for legitimate customers to enter, thus disrupting trade. Criminal perpetrators of DoS attacks often target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks or credit card payment gateways. Revenge, blackmail and hacktivism can motivate these attacks.

    

    Diagram of a DDoS attack. Note how multiple computers are attacking a single computer.

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