Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: Definition, Types, and Defense Strategies

a. A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, network or website by overwhelming it with a flood of traffic or requests, rendering it unavailable for legitimate users.

b. Many DoS attacks use packets with spoofed source addresses to make it difficult to trace the source of the attack and to prevent the attacker from being identified.

c. A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a more advanced form of DoS attack that involves multiple compromised systems attacking a single target. The attackers use a network of infected computers (botnet) to flood the target with traffic or requests, making it even more difficult to defend against.

d. The primary defense against many DoS attacks is to have sufficient bandwidth and resources to absorb the attack and to use anti-DoS tools and techniques such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and load balancers to filter out and block malicious traffic. Additionally, implementing a contingency plan and having backup systems in place can help mitigate the impact of a DoS attack.