What is a DDoS or DoS attack?
What is a DDoS or DoS attack?
(Distributed Denial of Service or Denial of Service)
In computing, a DoS or DDoS attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.
Although the means to carry out, the motives for, and targets of a DoS attack vary, it generally consists of efforts to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.
DDoS attacks are sent by two or more people, or bots, and DoS attacks are sent by one person or system. Botnets can generate huge floods of traffic to overwhelm a target, by saturating the target machine with external communications requests, so much so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered essentially unavailable. Such attacks usually lead to a server overload. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
These floods can be generated in multiple ways, such as sending more connection requests than a server can handle, or having computers send the victim huge amounts of random data to use up the target’s bandwidth. Some attacks are so big they can max out a country's international cable capacity.
As of 2014, the frequency of recognized DDoS attacks had reached an average rate of 28 per hour.
Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the Internet Architecture Board's Internet proper use policy, and also violate the acceptable use policies of virtually all Internet service providers. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations.