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Denial-of-service attack



 
 
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 site
Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
 or service
Web service

A Web service is defined by the W3C as "a software system designed to support interoperability Machine to Machine interaction over a computer network"....
 from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameserver
Root nameserver

A root name server is a Domain Name System server that answers requests for the DNS root zone, and redirects requests for a particular top-level domain to that TLD's nameservers....
s.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.






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A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 site
Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
 or service
Web service

A Web service is defined by the W3C as "a software system designed to support interoperability Machine to Machine interaction over a computer network"....
 from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameserver
Root nameserver

A root name server is a Domain Name System server that answers requests for the DNS root zone, and redirects requests for a particular top-level domain to that TLD's nameservers....
s.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources
Resource (computer science)

A resource, or system resource, is any physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. Every device connected to a computer system is a resource....
 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.

Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the IAB
Internet Architecture Board

The Internet Architecture Board is the committee charged with oversight of the technical and engineering development of the Internet by the Internet Society ....
's Internet Proper Use Policy
Internet ethics

In January 1989 the Internet Architecture Board issued a statement of policy concerning Internet ethics. This document is referred to as RFC 1087 'Ethics and the Internet'....
. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations
Computer crime

Computer crime, cybercrime, e-crime, hi-tech crime or electronic crime generally refers to criminal activity where a computer or Computer networking is the source, tool, target, or place of a crime....
.

Means

As there are two main types of attack (wired and wireless); different material is to be used for each of the two types.

Attacks on wired networks require a great deal of computing power, often even requiring the need of distributed computing
Distributed computing

Distributed computing deals with hardware and software systems containing more than one processing element or Computer data storage element, Concurrent computing processes, or multiple programs, running under a loosely or tightly controlled regime....
. Attacks on wired networks of course do not require any NICs or external antennae, yet often does have the need of a (broadband) connection to the Internet.

Attacks on wireless networks require a high power NIC
Negative impedance converter

The negative impedance converter is a configuration of an operational amplifier which acts as a negative load. This is achieved by introducing a phase shift of 180? between the voltage and the current for any signal generator....
 and usually a high-gain (directional) external antenna (to increase range as well as power output). High power NICs fall in the range of the 300mW-cards. Examples can be found from companies such as Demarc Technology Group.

Manifestations

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team is part of the National Cyber Security Division of the United States's United States Department of Homeland Security....
 defines symptoms of denial-of-service attacks to include:

  • Unusually slow network performance (opening files or accessing web sites)
  • Unavailability of a particular web site
  • Inability to access any web site
  • Dramatic increase in the number of spam emails received - (this type of DoS attack is considered a "Mail-Bomb".)


Not all service outages, even those that result from malicious activity, are necessarily denial-of-service attacks. Other methods of attack may include a denial of service as one component of a larger offensive.

Denial-of-service attacks can also lead to problems in the network 'branches' around the actual computer being attacked. For example, the bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)

In computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it ....
 of a router between the Internet and a LAN
Local area network

A local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport....
 may be consumed by an attack, compromising not only the intended computer, but also the entire network.

If the attack is conducted on a sufficiently large scale, entire geographical regions of Internet connectivity can be compromised without the attacker's knowledge or intent by incorrectly configured or flimsy network infrastructure equipment.

Methods of attack


A "denial-of-service" attack is characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. Attacks can be directed at any network device, including attacks on routing
Routing

Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the PSTN, Computer network , and transport network....
 devices and web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
, electronic mail, or Domain Name System
Domain name system

The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants....
 server
Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
s.

A DoS attack can be perpetrated in a number of ways. The five basic types of attack are:

  1. Consumption of computational resources, such as bandwidth, disk space, or processor
    Central processing unit

    A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage....
     time
  2. Disruption of configuration information, such as routing
    Routing

    Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the PSTN, Computer network , and transport network....
     information.
  3. Disruption of state information, such as unsolicited resetting of TCP sessions.
  4. Disruption of physical network components.
  5. Obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.


A DoS attack may include execution of malware
Malware

Malware, a portmanteau from the words Malice and Computer software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent....
 intended to:

  • Max out the processor
    Processor

    Processor may refer to:In computing:* Central processing unit , the part of a computer that interprets instructions, in case of a multi-core processor it refers to multiple CPU's....
    's usage, preventing any work from occurring.
  • Trigger errors in the microcode of the machine.
  • Trigger errors in the sequencing of instructions, so as to force the computer into an unstable state or lock-up.
  • Exploits errors in the operating system to cause resource starvation
    Resource starvation

    In computer science, starvation is a computer multitasking-related problem, where a computer process is perpetually denied necessary Resource s....
     and/or thrashing
    Thrash (computer science)

    In computer science, thrash , is the term used to describe a degenerate situation on a computer where increasing resources are used to do a decreasing amount of work....
    , i.e. to use up all available facilities so no real work can be accomplished.
  • Crash the operating system itself.
  • iFrame (D)DoS, in which an HTML document is made to visit a webpage with many KB's of information many times, until they achieve the amount of visits to where bandwidth limit is exceeded.


ICMP flood


A smurf attack
Smurf attack

The Smurf attack is a way of generating a lot of computer network traffic on a victim network. This is a type of denial-of-service attack that floods a target system via IP address spoofing broadcast ping messages....
 is one particular variant of a flooding DoS attack on the public Internet. It relies on misconfigured network devices that allow packets to be sent to all computer hosts on a particular network via the broadcast address
Broadcast address

In computer networking, a broadcast address is an IP address that allows information to be sent to all machines on a given subnetwork rather than a specific machine....
 of the network, rather than a specific machine. The network then serves as a smurf amplifier. In such an attack, the perpetrators will send large numbers of IP
Internet protocol

Internet protocol may refer to:*The Internet Protocol, a specific protocol implementation in the Internet protocol suite*The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that are used for the Internet...
 packets with the source address faked to appear to be the address of the victim. The network's bandwidth is quickly used up, preventing legitimate packets from getting through to their destination. To combat Denial of Service attacks on the Internet, services like the Smurf Amplifier Registry
Smurf Amplifier Registry

The Smurf Amplifier Registry is a blacklist of computer network on the Internet which have been misconfigured in such a way that they can be used as smurf amplifiers for smurf attack denial of service attacks....
 have given network service provider
Network service provider

A network service provider is a business or organization that sells Bandwidth or network access by providing direct Internet backbone access to the Internet and usually access to its network access points ....
s the ability to identify misconfigured networks and to take appropriate action such as filtering.

Ping flood
Ping flood

A ping flood is a simple denial-of-service attack where the attacker overwhelms the victim with ICMP Echo Request packet s. It only succeeds if the attacker has more Bandwidth than the victim ....
 is based on sending the victim an overwhelming number of ping
Ping

Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular Host is reachable across an Internet protocol suite network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer, or as a speed test....
 packets, usually using the "ping -t" command from unix like hosts (the -t flag on Windows systems has a far less malignant function). It is very simple to launch, the primary requirement being access to greater bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)

In computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it ....
 than the victim.

SYN flood
SYN flood

A SYN flood is a form of denial-of-service attack in which an attacker sends a succession of SYN requests to a target's system....
 sends a flood of TCP/SYN packets, often with a forged sender address. Each of these packets is handled like a connection request, causing the server to spawn a half-open connection, by sending back a TCP/SYN-ACK packet, and waiting for a packet in response from the sender address. However, because the sender address is forged, the response never comes. These half-open connections saturate the number of available connections the server is able to make, keeping it from responding to legitimate requests until after the attack ends.

Teardrop attack


A Teardrop attack involves sending mangled
Mangled packet

In computer networking, a mangled or invalid packet is a Packet —especially Internet protocol suite packet—which lacks sound order, self-coherence or content to confuse computers, firewall , routers or any service present on the network....
 IP
Internet protocol

Internet protocol may refer to:*The Internet Protocol, a specific protocol implementation in the Internet protocol suite*The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that are used for the Internet...
 fragments with overlapping, over-sized, payloads to the target machine. A bug in the TCP/IP fragmentation re-assembly
IPv4

Internet Protocol version 4 is the fourth revision in the development of the Internet Protocol and it is the first version of the protocol to be widely deployed....
 code of various operating systems causes the fragments to be improperly handled, crashing them as a result of this. Windows 3.1x
Windows 3.1x

Windows 3.1x is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers. The line began with Windows 3.1, which was released in March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0....
, Windows 95
Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Microsoft Windows products....
, and Windows NT
Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix....
 operating systems, as well as versions of Linux
Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
 prior to versions 2.0.32 and 2.1.63 are vulnerable to this attack.

Peer-to-peer attacks


Attackers have found a way to exploit a number of bugs in peer-to-peer servers to initiate DDoS attacks. The most aggressive of these peer-to-peer-DDoS attacks exploits DC++
DC++

DC++ is a free software and open source software, peer-to-peer file sharing client that can be used to connect to the Direct Connect network or to the Advanced Direct Connect protocol....
. Peer-to-peer attacks are different from regular botnet
Botnet

Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or Internet bots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is often associated with malicious software but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software....
-based attacks. With peer-to-peer there is no botnet and the attacker does not have to communicate with the clients it subverts. Instead, the attacker acts as a 'puppet master,' instructing clients of large peer-to-peer file sharing hubs to disconnect from their peer-to-peer network and to connect to the victim’s website instead. As a result, several thousand computers may aggressively try to connect to a target website. While a typical web server can handle a few hundred connections/sec before performance begins to degrade, most web servers fail almost instantly under five or six thousand connections/sec. With a moderately big peer-to-peer attack a site could potentially be hit with up to 750,000 connections in a short order. The targeted web server will be plugged up by the incoming connections. While peer-to-peer attacks are easy to identify with signatures, the large number of IP addresses that need to be blocked (often over 250,000 during the course of a big attack) means that this type of attack can overwhelm mitigation defenses. Even if a mitigation device can keep blocking IP addresses, there are other problems to consider. For instance, there is a brief moment where the connection is opened on the server side before the signature itself comes through. Only once the connection is opened to the server can the identifying signature be sent and detected, and the connection torn down. Even tearing down connections takes server resources and can harm the server.

This method of attack can be prevented by specifying in the p2p protocol which ports are allowed or not. If port 80 is not allowed, the possibilities for attack on websites can be very limited.

Permanent denial-of-service attacks


A permanent denial-of-service (PDoS), also known loosely as phlashing, is an attack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. Unlike the distributed denial-of-service attack, a PDoS attack exploits security flaws in the remote management interfaces of the victim's hardware, be it routers, printers, or other networking hardware. These flaws leave the door open for an attacker to remotely 'update' the device firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 to a modified, corrupt or defective firmware image, therefore bricking
Brick (electronics)

When used in reference to electronics, "brick" describes a device that cannot function in any capacity . This usage derives from the fact that some electronic devices are vaguely brick-shaped, and so those which do not function are as useful only as brick....
 the device and making it permanently unusable for its original purpose. The PDoS is a pure hardware targeted attack which can be much faster and requires fewer resources than using a botnet in a DDoS attack. Because of these features, and the potential and high probability of security exploits on Network Enabled Embedded Devices (NEEDs), this technique has come to the attention of numerous hacker
Hacker (computer security)

In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground....
 communities such as .

PhlashDance is a tool created by Rich Smith (an employee of Hewlett-Packard's Systems Security Lab) used to detect and demonstrate PDoS vulnerabilities at the 2008 in London.

Application level floods


On IRC
Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for Many-to-many in discussion forums, called #Channels, but also allows One-to-one via instant messaging, as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client....
, IRC floods are a common electronic warfare weapon.

Various DoS-causing exploits
Exploit (computer security)

An exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or sequence of commands that take advantage of a software bug, glitch or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic ....
 such as buffer overflow
Buffer overflow

In computer security and computer programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an Anomaly in software condition where a process attempts to store data beyond the boundaries of a fixed-length buffer ....
 can cause server-running software to get confused and fill the disk space or consume all available memory or CPU time.

Other kinds of DoS rely primarily on brute force, flooding the target with an overwhelming flux of packets, oversaturating its connection bandwidth or depleting the target's system resources. Bandwidth-saturating floods rely on the attacker having higher bandwidth available than the victim; a common way of achieving this today is via Distributed Denial of Service, employing a botnet
Botnet

Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or Internet bots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is often associated with malicious software but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software....
. Other floods may use specific packet types or connection requests to saturate finite resources by, for example, occupying the maximum number of open connections or filling the victim's disk space with logs.

A "banana attack" is another particular type of DoS. It involves redirecting outgoing messages from the client back onto the client, preventing outside access, as well as flooding the client with the sent packets.

An attacker with access to a victim's computer may slow it until it is unusable or crash it by using a fork bomb
Fork bomb

In computing, the fork bomb, a form of denial of service attack against a computer system, implements the fork operation whereby a running process can create another running process....
.

Nuke


A Nuke is an old denial-of-service attack against computer networks consisting of fragmented or otherwise invalid ICMP
Internet Control Message Protocol

The Internet Control Message Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. It is chiefly used by networked computers' operating systems to send error messages—indicating, for instance, that a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached....
 packets sent to the target, achieved by using a modified ping
Ping

Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular Host is reachable across an Internet protocol suite network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer, or as a speed test....
 utility to repeatedly send this corrupt data, thus slowing down the affected computer until it comes to a complete stop.

In online gaming, nuking is used by spamming another user, or all other users, with random repeated messages in quick succession. Such techniques are also seen in instant messaging
Instant messaging

Instant messaging is a form of Real-time computing communication between two or more people based on typed text. The Written language is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet....
 programs as repeatedly sending text can be assigned to a macro or AppleScript
AppleScript

AppleScript is a scripting language devised by Apple Inc., and built into Mac OS. More generally, "AppleScript" is the word used to designate the Mac OS scripting interface, which is meant to operate in parallel with the graphical user interface....
. Modern operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
s are usually resistant to these nuke attacks, and online games now have third party "Flood control."

A specific example of a nuke attack that gained some prominence is the WinNuke
WinNuke

The term WinNuke refers to a remote denial-of-service attack that affected the Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 3.1x computer operating systems....
, which exploited the vulnerability in the NetBIOS
NetBIOS

NetBIOS is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network....
 handler in Windows 95
Windows 95

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Microsoft Windows products....
. A string of out-of-band data was sent to TCP
Transmission Control Protocol

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is so central that the entire suite is often referred to as "TCP/IP"....
 port 139 of the victim's machine, causing it to lock up and display a Blue Screen of Death
Blue Screen of Death

The Blue Screen of Death is a humorous term used for the error screen displayed by some operating systems, most notably Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error which can cause the system to shut down to prevent damage....
.

Distributed attack


A distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) occurs when multiple compromised systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. These systems are compromised by attackers using a variety of methods.

Malware can carry DDoS attack mechanisms; one of the more well known examples of this was MyDoom. Its DoS mechanism was triggered on a specific date and time. This type of DDoS involved hardcoding the target IP address prior to release of the malware and no further interaction was necessary to launch the attack.

A system may also be compromised with a trojan, allowing the attacker to download a zombie agent (or the trojan may contain one). Attackers can also break into systems using automated tools that exploit flaws in programs that listen for connections from remote hosts. This scenario primarily concerns systems acting as servers on the web.

Stacheldraht
Stacheldraht

Stacheldraht is a piece of software written by Random for Linux and Solaris systems which acts as a distributed denial of service agent. The tool detects and automatically enables source address forgery....
 is a classic example of a DDoS tool. It utilizes a layered structure where the attacker uses a client program to connect to handlers, which are compromised systems that issue commands to the zombie agents
Zombie computer

A zombie computer is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a Hacker , a computer virus, or a Trojan horse . Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction....
, which in turn facilitate the DDoS attack. Agents are compromised via the handlers by the attacker, using automated routines to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that accept remote connections running on the targeted remote hosts. Each handler can control up to a thousand agents.

These collections of compromised systems are known as botnets. DDoS tools like stacheldraht still use classic DoS attack methods centered on IP spoofing and amplification like smurf attack
Smurf attack

The Smurf attack is a way of generating a lot of computer network traffic on a victim network. This is a type of denial-of-service attack that floods a target system via IP address spoofing broadcast ping messages....
s and fraggle attack
Fraggle attack

In computer security a fraggle attack is a type of denial-of-service attack where an attacker sends a large amount of User Datagram Protocol echo traffic to IP broadcast addresses, all of it having a fake source address....
s (these are also known as bandwidth consumption attacks). SYN floods (also known as resource starvation attacks) may also be used. Newer tools can use DNS servers for DoS purposes. (see next section)

Unlike MyDoom's DDoS mechanism, botnets can be turned against any IP address. Script kiddies use them to deny the availability of well known websites to legitimate users. More sophisticated attackers use DDoS tools for the purposes of extortion
Extortion

Extortion, outwresting, or exaction is a crime, which occurs, when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion....
 — even against their business rivals.

It is important to note the difference between a DDoS and DoS attack. If an attacker mounts a smurf attack from a single host it would be classified as a DoS attack. In fact, any attack against availability would be classed as a Denial of Service attack. On the other hand, if an attacker uses a thousand zombie systems to simultaneously launch smurf attacks against a remote host, this would be classified as a DDoS attack.

The major advantages to an attacker of using a distributed denial-of-service attack are that multiple machines can generate more attack traffic than one machine, multiple attack machines are harder to turn off than one attack machine, and that the behavior of each attack machine can be stealthier, making it harder to track down and shut down. These attacker advantages cause challenges for defense mechanisms. For example, merely purchasing more incoming bandwidth than the current volume of the attack might not help, because the attacker might be able to simply add more attack machines.

Although most DDoS attacks are malicious in nature, the same technique can be used to aid the Internet community. Internet fraud schemes, such as Nigerian 419 scams
Advance fee fraud

An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain....
 or phishing
Phishing

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication....
, commonly involve fraudulent websites that either impersonate a real website for purposes of stealing the victim's identity, or lend credibility to a scammer's fictional business venture to lure the victim into a false sense of confidence. Scam baiters
Scam baiting

Scam baiting is the practice of pretending interest in a fraudulent scheme in order to manipulate a scammer. The purpose of scam baiting might be to waste the scammers' time, embarrass him or her, cause him or her to reveal information which can be passed on to legal authorities, get him or her to waste money, or, in the great majority of cas...
, who combat these scams by posing as victims for the purpose of wasting the scammer's time and money and obtaining information that can be used by authorities, will forward sites they encounter during the course of their conversations to groups that specialize in site-killing. The group will first try to have a site taken down by informing the host of said site that the site is being used fraudulently. In the case where that approach fails, the group will organize a "takedown" of the site by encouraging its members to visit the site en masse and continually refresh its content (an intentional form of the Slashdot effect
Slashdot effect

The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, is the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic....
 sometimes referred to as flash mob
Flash mob

A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse....
bing, although that term is technically reserved for real-world gatherings). Alternately, some groups have special web pages that link to images hosted by these fake sites and show the images to visitors (usually members or supporters of the site-killing group) while constantly reloading them, which is known as intentional bandwidth hogging
Bandwidth hogging

Bandwidth hogs are otherwise legitimate users of a paid or free service who use so much Bandwidth that it adversely affects other users or the company's ability to make a profit....
. The purpose, similar to malicious DoS attacks, is to (a.) rapidly consume all of the website's allocated monthly bandwidth, after which requests for the site's content are refused, (b.) draw the attention of the site's host, who when faced with the constant onslaught on the entire hosting network's resources, will usually remove the site, and/or (c.) take up all available connections and maximum throughput
Throughput

In communication networks, such as Ethernet or packet radio, throughput is the average rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel....
 of the host so that would-be victims cannot access the site.

Reflected attack


A distributed reflected denial of service attack (DRDoS) involves sending forged requests of some type to a very large number of computers that will reply to the requests. Using Internet protocol spoofing, the source address is set to that of the targeted victim, which means all the replies will go to (and flood) the target.

ICMP Echo Request attacks (Smurf Attack
Smurf attack

The Smurf attack is a way of generating a lot of computer network traffic on a victim network. This is a type of denial-of-service attack that floods a target system via IP address spoofing broadcast ping messages....
) can be considered one form of reflected attack, as the flooding host(s) send Echo Requests to the broadcast addresses of mis-configured networks, thereby enticing many hosts to send Echo Reply packets to the victim. Some early DDoS programs implemented a distributed form of this attack.

Many services can be exploited to act as reflectors, some harder to block than others. DNS amplification attacks involve a new mechanism that increased the amplification effect, using a much larger list of DNS servers than seen earlier.

Degradation-of-service attacks

"Pulsing" zombies are compromised computers that are directed to launch intermittent and short-lived floodings of victim websites with the intent of merely slowing it rather than crashing it. This type of attack, referred to as "degradation-of-service" rather than "denial-of-service", can be more difficult to detect than regular zombie invasions and can disrupt and hamper connection to websites for prolonged periods of time, potentially causing more damage than concentrated floods. Exposure of degradation-of-service attacks is complicated further by the matter of discerning whether the attacks really are attacks or just healthy and likely desired increases in website traffic.

Unintentional attack


This describes a situation where a website ends up denied, not due to a deliberate attack by a single individual or group of individuals, but simply due to a sudden enormous spike in popularity. This can happen when an extremely popular website posts a prominent link to a second, less well-prepared site, for example, as part of a news story. The result is that a significant proportion of the primary site's regular users — potentially hundreds of thousands of people — click that link in the space of a few hours, having the same effect on the target website as a DDoS attack.

News sites and link sites — sites whose primary function is to provide links to interesting content elsewhere on the Internet — are most likely to cause this phenomenon. The canonical example is the Slashdot effect
Slashdot effect

The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, is the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic....
. Sites such as Digg
Digg

digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories....
, the Drudge Report
Drudge Report

The Drudge Report is a news aggregation website run by Conservatism in the United States Matt Drudge. The site consists mainly of hyperlinks to stories from the U.S....
, Fark
FARK

FARK or fark may refer to:* FARK, an acronym for the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova , a guerrilla warfare group in Kosovo.* FARK, an acronym for the Royal Khmer Armed Forces , the Cambodian army under King Sihanouk....
, Something Awful
Something Awful

Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, Internet forum, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews....
, and the webcomic Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade (webcomic)

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and gaming culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames....
 have their own corresponding "effects", known as "the Digg effect", being "drudged", "farking", "goonrushing" and "wanging"; respectively.

Routers have also been known to create unintentional DoS attacks, as both D-Link
D-Link

D-Link Corporation was founded in 1986 in Taipei as Datex Systems Inc. It began as a network adapter vendor and has gone on to become a designer, developer and manufacturer of networking solutions for both the consumer and business markets....
 and Netgear
Netgear

Netgear, founded in 1996, is a US manufacturer of computer Computer network equipment and other computer hardware. The company was incorporated January 8, 1996 as a subsidiary of Bay Networks, to "focus on providing networking solutions for small businesses and homes." In August 1998, the company was purchased by Nortel as part of its acquis...
 routers have created NTP vandalism by flooding NTP servers without respecting the restrictions of client types or geographical limitations.

Similar unintentional attacks can also occur via other media, e.g. when a URL is mentioned on television. If a server is being indexed by Google
Google

Google Inc. is an United States public company, earning revenue from AdWords related to its Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Apps, Orkut, and YouTube services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the Google Search Appliance....
 or another search engine during peak periods of activity, or does not have a lot of available bandwidth while being indexed, it can also experience the effects of a DoS attack.

Legal action has been taken in at least one case of an unintentional attack. In 2006, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation
Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment

Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation is an United States manufacturer and supplier of metal machine tubes and pipes, founded in 1985....
 has sued YouTube
YouTube

YouTube is a Video hosting service website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005....
: massive numbers of would-be youtube.com users accidentally typed the tube company's URL, utube.com; as a result, the tube company ended up having to spend large amounts of money on upgrading their bandwidth.

Denial-of-Service Level II


The goal of DoS L2 (possibly DDoS) attack is to cause a launching of a defence mechanism which blocks the network segment from which the attack originated. In case of distributed attack or IP header modification (that depends on the kind of security behavior) it will fully block the attacked network from Internet, but without system crash.

Incidents


The first major attack involving DNS servers as reflectors occurred in January 2001. The target was Register.com. This attack, which forged requests for the MX records of AOL.com (to amplify the attack) lasted about a week before it could be traced back to all attacking hosts and shut off. It used a list of tens of thousands of DNS records that were a year old at the time of the attack.

In February, 2001, the Irish Government's Department of Finance server was hit by a denial of service attack carried out as part of a student campaign from NUI Maynooth. The Department officially complained to the University authorities and a number of students were disciplined.

In July 2002, the Honeynet Project Reverse Challenge was issued. The binary that was analyzed turned out to be yet another DDoS agent, which implemented several DNS related attacks, including an optimized form of a reflection attack.

On two occasions to date, attackers have performed DNS Backbone DDoS Attacks on the DNS root servers. Since these machines are intended to provide service to all Internet users, these two denial of service attacks might be classified as attempts to take down the entire Internet, though it is unclear what the attackers' true motivations were. The first occurred in October 2002 and disrupted service at 9 of the 13 root servers. The second occurred in February 2007 and caused disruptions at two of the root servers.

In February 2007, more than 10,000 online game servers in games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first person shooter computer game published by Activision and originally released on November 19, 2001 for Microsoft Windows....
, Halo, Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike is a tactical shooter first-person shooter video game which originated from a Half-Life Game mod by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe....
 and many others were attacked by "RUS" hacker group. The DDoS attack was made from more than a thousand computer units located in the republics of the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
, mostly from Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
 and Belarus
Belarus

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north....
. Minor attacks are still continuing to be made today.

In the weeks leading up to the five-day 2008 South Ossetia war
2008 South Ossetia war

The 2008 South Ossetia War, also known as August War, Five-Day War, Georgia-Russia Conflict or Russia-Georgia War, was an war between Georgia on the one side, and Russian Federation together with Separatism in South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other....
, a DDoS attack directed at Georgian government sites
Cyberattacks during the 2008 South Ossetia war

File:Saakashvili-Hitler montage.pngDuring the 2008 South Ossetia war a series of cyberattacks swamped and disabled websites of numerous Georgia n, Russian, South Ossetian and Azerbaijani organisations....
 containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia" effectively overloaded and shut down multiple Georgian servers. Websites targeted included the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, rendered inoperable for 24 hours, and the National Bank of Georgia. While heavy suspicion was placed on Russia for orchestrating the attack through a proxy, the St. Petersburg-based criminal gang known as the Russian Business Network, or R.B.N, the Russian government denied the allegations, stating that it was possible that individuals in Russia or elsewhere had taken it upon themselves to start the attacks.

Performing DoS-attacks

A wide array of programs are used to launch DoS-attacks. Most of these programs are completely focused on performing DoS-attacks, while others are also true Packet injectors, thus able to perform other tasks as well.

Prevention and response


Surviving attacks

The investigative process should begin immediately after the DoS attack begins. There will be multiple phone calls, callbacks
Callback (telecommunications)

In telecommunications, a callback occurs when the originator of a call is immediately called back in a second call as a response....
, emails
E-mail

Electronic mail, often abbreviated as e-mail, email, E-Mail, or eMail, is any method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems....
, pages
Pager

A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then expected to call....
 and fax
Fax

Fax is a telecommunications technology used to transfer copies of documents, especially using affordable devices operating over the telephone network....
es between the victim organization, one's provider, and others involved. This can be a very time consuming process. It has taken some very large networks with plenty of resources several hours to halt a DoS attack.

The easiest way to survive an attack is to have planned for the attack. Having a separate emergency block of IP address
IP address

An Internet Protocol address is a numerical identification that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes....
es for critical servers with a separate route can be invaluable. A separate route (perhaps a DSL
Digital Subscriber Line

DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provides digital data transmission over the wires of a local access network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, the term digital subscriber line has been widely adopted as a more marketing-friendly term for ADSL, which is the most popular...
) is not that extravagant, and it can be used for load balancing or sharing under normal circumstances and switched to emergency mode in the event of an attack.

Filtering is often ineffective, as the route to the filter will normally be swamped so only a trickle of traffic will survive. However, by using an extremely resilient stateful packet filter
Firewall

Firewall may refer to:* Firewall , a physical barrier inside a building or vehicle, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse...
 that will inexpensively drop any unwanted packets, surviving a DoS attack becomes much easier. When such a high performance packet filtering
Firewall

Firewall may refer to:* Firewall , a physical barrier inside a building or vehicle, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse...
 server is attached to an ultra-high bandwidth connection (preferably an internet backbone
Internet backbone

The Internet backbone refers to the main Trunking connections of the Internet. It is made up of a large collection of interconnected commercial, government, academic and other high-capacity data routes and core routers that carry data across the countries, continents and oceans of the world....
), communication with the outside world will be unimpaired so long as not all of the available bandwidth is saturated, and performance behind the packet filter will remain normal as long as the packet filter drops all DoS packets. It should be noted however, that in this case the victim of the DoS attack still would need to pay for the excessive bandwidth. The price of service unavailability thus needs to be weighed against the price of truly exorbitant bandwidth/traffic.

Firewalls


Firewall
Firewall (networking)

A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system....
s have simple rules such as to allow or deny protocols, ports or IP addresses. Some DoS attacks are too complex for today's firewalls, e.g. if there is an attack on port 80 (web service), firewalls cannot prevent that attack because they cannot distinguish good traffic from DoS attack traffic. Additionally, firewalls are too deep in the network hierarchy. Routers may be affected even before the firewall gets the traffic. Nonetheless, firewalls can effectively prevent users from launching simple flooding type attacks from machines behind the firewall.

Modern stateful firewall
Stateful firewall

In computing, a stateful firewall is a Firewall that keeps track of the state of network connections traveling across it. The firewall is programmed to distinguish legitimate packets for different types of connections....
s like Check Point
Check Point

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is a hardware and software company that is best known for its firewall and VPN products. The company was founded in 1993 in Ramat-Gan, Israel, by Gil Shwed, Shlomo Kramer, and Marius Nacht....
 FW1 NGX and Cisco PIX
Cisco PIX

Cisco PIX is a popular Internet protocol suite Firewall and network address translation computer appliance. It was one of the first products in this market segment....
 have a built-in capability to differentiate good traffic from DoS attack traffic. This capability is known as a "Defender", as it confirms TCP connections are valid before proxying TCP packets to service networks (including border routers). A similar ability is present in OpenBSD's pF, which is available for other BSDs as well. In that context, it is called "synproxy".

Comodo Firewall Pro has a built-in Emergency Mode which is activated when the number of incoming packets per seconds exceed a set value for more than the specified time, for example, more than 20 packets/sec for more than 20 seconds. If this happens, the firewall classifies it as a DoS attack and switches to Emergency Mode. In this mode, all inbound traffic is blocked except previously established and active connections, but outbound traffic is allowed. The packet number threshold and the time needed for verifying an attack can be adjusted by the user separately for TCP, UDP, and ICMP. The firewall also has some other attack prevention mechanisms, like protocol analysis, checksum verification (so that the packets are not altered since transmission) and NDIS protocol monitoring for attempts at making a DoS attack by using own protocols, thus outmaneuvering older firewalls.

Switches


Most switches have some rate-limiting and ACL
Access control list

With respect to a computer filesystem, an access control list is a list of permissions attached to an object. The list specifies who or what is allowed to access the object and what operations are allowed to be performed on the object....
 capability. Some switches provide automatic and/or system-wide rate limiting
Rate limiting

In computer networks, rate limiting is used to control the rate of traffic sent or received on a network interface. Traffic that is less than or equal to the specified rate is sent, whereas traffic that exceeds the rate is dropped or delayed....
, traffic shaping
Traffic shaping

Traffic shaping is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, lower Latency , and/or increase usable Bandwidth by delaying Packet that meet certain criteria....
, delayed binding
Delayed binding

Delayed binding, also called TCP splicing, is the postponement of the connection between the client and the server in order to obtain sufficient information to make a routing decision....
 (TCP splicing), deep packet inspection
Deep packet inspection

Deep Packet Inspection is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data and/or Header part of a Packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, Computer viruses, Spam , intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destinat...
 and Bogon filtering
Bogon filtering

"Bogon" is an informal name for an Internet Protocol packet on the public Internet that claims to be from an area of the IP address space reserved, but not yet allocated or delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or a delegated Regional Internet Registry ....
 (bogus IP filtering) to detect and remediate denial of service attacks through automatic rate filtering and WAN Link failover and balancing.

These schemes will work as long as the DoS attacks are something that can be prevented by using them. For example SYN flood can be prevented using delayed binding or TCP splicing. Similarly content based DoS can be prevented using deep packet inspection. Attacks originating from dark addresses or going to dark addresses can be prevented using Bogon filtering. Automatic rate filtering can work as long as you have set rate-thresholds correctly and granularly. Wan-link failover will work as long as both links have DoS/DDoS prevention mechanism.

Routers


Similar to switches, routers have some rate-limiting and ACL
Access control list

With respect to a computer filesystem, an access control list is a list of permissions attached to an object. The list specifies who or what is allowed to access the object and what operations are allowed to be performed on the object....
 capability. They, too, are manually set. Most routers can be easily overwhelmed under DoS attack. If you add rules to take flow statistics out of the router during the DoS attacks, they further slow down and complicate the matter. Cisco IOS
Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS is the software used on the vast majority of Cisco Systems routers and all current Cisco network switches. . IOS is a package of routing, switching, internetworking and telecommunications functions tightly integrated with a computer multitasking operating system....
 has features that prevents flooding, i.e. example settings.

Application front end hardware


Application front end hardware is intelligent hardware placed on the network before traffic reaches the servers. It can be used on networks in conjunction with routers and switches. Application front end hardware analyzes data packets as they enter the system, and then identifies them as priority, regular, or dangerous. There are more than 25 bandwidth management vendors. Hardware acceleration is key to bandwidth management. Look for granularity of bandwidth management, hardware acceleration, and automation while selecting an appliance.

IPS based prevention


Intrusion-prevention system
Intrusion-prevention system

An Intrusion Prevention System is a network security device that monitors network and/or system activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities....
s (IPS) are effective if the attacks have signatures associated with them. However, the trend among the attacks is to have legitimate content but bad intent. Intrusion-prevention systems which work on content recognition cannot block behavior based DoS attacks.

An ASIC
ASIC

The acronym ASIC, depending on context, may stand for:* Application-specific integrated circuit, an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use...
 based IPS can detect and block denial of service attacks because they have the processing power and the granularity to analyze the attacks and act like a circuit breaker in an automated way.

A rate-based IPS (RBIPS) must analyze traffic granularly and continuously monitor the traffic pattern and determine if there is traffic anomaly. It must let the legitimate traffic flow while blocking the DoS attack traffic.

Prevention via Proactive Testing


Test platforms such as Mu Dynamics
Mu Dynamics

Mu Dynamics is a private Venture capital company that makes hardware and software to test network services, allowing its users to quantify their product's or service's reliability, availability and security....
' Service Analyzer are available to perform simulated denial-of-service attacks that can be used to evaluate defensive mechanisms such IPS, RBIPS, as well as the popular denial-of-service mitigation products from Arbor Networks. An example of proactive testing of denial-of-service throttling capabilities in a switch was published earlier this year: The switch with integrated denial-of-service throttling was tested by and was .

Side effects of DoS attacks


Backscatter

In computer network security, backscatter is a side-effect of a spoofed denial of service (DoS) attack. In this kind of attack, the attacker spoofs (or forges) the source address in IP
Internet protocol

Internet protocol may refer to:*The Internet Protocol, a specific protocol implementation in the Internet protocol suite*The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that are used for the Internet...
 packets sent to the victim. In general, the victim machine can not distinguish between the spoofed packets and legitimate packets, so the victim responds to the spoofed packets as it normally would. These response packets are known as backscatter.

If the attacker is spoofing source addresses randomly, the backscatter response packets from the victim will be sent back to random destinations. This effect can be used by network telescope
Network telescope

A network telescope is an internet system that allows one to observe different large-scale events taking place on the Internet. The basic idea is to observe traffic targeting the dark address-space of the network....
s as an indirect evidence of such attacks.

The term "backscatter analysis" refers to observing backscatter packets arriving at a statistically significant portion of the IP address
IP address

An Internet Protocol address is a numerical identification that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes....
 space to determine characteristics of DoS attacks and victims.

An educational animation describing such backscatter can be found on the maintained by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis

The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis is a collaborative undertaking among organizations in the commercial, government, and research sectors aimed at promoting greater cooperation in the engineering and maintenance of a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure....
.

See also

  • Intrusion-prevention system
    Intrusion-prevention system

    An Intrusion Prevention System is a network security device that monitors network and/or system activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities....
  • Black fax
    Black fax

    The term black fax refers to a prank fax transmission, consisting of one or more pages entirely filled with a uniform black tone and often made into a loop the sending machine will transmit endlessly....
  • Dosnet
    Dosnet

    A Dosnet is a type of botnet/malware and mostly used as a term for malicious botnets while benevolent botnets often simply are referred to as botnets....
  • Intrusion-detection system
    Intrusion-detection system

    An Intrusion detection system is software and/or hardware designed to detect unwanted attempts at accessing, manipulating, and/or disabling of computer, mainly through a network, such as the Internet....
  • Network intrusion detection system
    Network intrusion detection system

    A network intrusion detection system is an intrusion detection system that tries to detect malicious activity such as denial of service attacks, port scans or even attempts to black hat into computers by monitoring computer network traffic....
  • Wireless signal jammer
    Wireless signal jammer

    Wireless signal jammers are devices used to disrupt radio signal . The low cost of manufacture of wireless signal jammers and their damaging effects has added to their popularity and frequent use....
  • Zombie computer
    Zombie computer

    A zombie computer is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a Hacker , a computer virus, or a Trojan horse . Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction....


External links


  • RFC 4732 Internet Denial-of-Service Considerations
  • CERT's Guide to DoS attacks.
  • - Real-time global report of DDoS attacks.
  • An article on preventing DDoS attacks.
  • , About.com.