--Originally published at Computer security
In this post I will explain one of the most frequently used attacks in the Cyber Security industry, the Denial of Service attacks, and with this you will understand more about the subject and why it is important to know how to avoid it at all cost, let’s begin.
First let’s explain what Denial of Service attack is, Denial of service attack or for more casual expressions a DOS is an attempt to prevent a user to access any type of information or a service provided by an organization. Targeting a network or a computer, an attacker can prevent you from accessing webpages, email accounts, banking accounts, etc.
So it can be said that a Denial of Service(DoS) attack is characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. The main reason one would want to use this types of atttacks is to accomplish the folowing:
- Attempts to flood a network to render it useless.
- Attempts to disrupt connections between two machines, thereby preventing the access to a service.
- Attempts to prevent an specific user from accessing the server or to access a service.
- Attempts to disrupt service to a specific system.
Sometimes a DoS attack is part of something else much bigger, that is when a Distributed Denial of Service comes into play, a DDoS can be said that is the next step of a DoS, its like an evolved form, by using multiple IP addresses to target a specific host and make it totally useless, a normal DoS attack is just one address and that can do a pretty decent damage, but a DDos is plain overkill, so one should better watch out for this and avoid it at all costs.
But how do I prevemt this?
If you want don’t want
- Managing and configure your firewall, router or switch: A simple DoS the attack can be denied by adding specific rules to your firewall, routers or switch that can deny the traffic between the attacker and the network.
- Blackholing and sinkholing: A technique that sends all the unwanted traffic into a null interface to avoid network overflow.
- Bandwidth Managers: Use this front end services that help analyze traffic and determine dangerous behavior and act accordingly.
Remember , if you connection seems a little bit slow or you are havieng problems with spamming or a website access be sure to analyse the traffic of your network, you will thank me later, be safe see you later!
