What is Denial of Service (DoS)?
A DoS attack is an instance where machines or networks are flooded with false requests to disrupt regular operations, rendering users unable to perform routine and necessary tasks like emails and web browsers. Servers are overwhelmed by these attacks, leading to slowness or even crashes of the servers, with the attacker needing more bandwidth than the target for a successful attack. There are two types of DoS attacks: buffer overflows and flood attacks. Buffer overflows target vulnerabilities in networks to overwhelm memory buffers and cause crashes, and flood attacks target bandwidth to overwhelm in sheer numbers of traffic.
Identifying and Mitigating DoS Attacks
To identify DoS attacks, being unable to access online resources like websites, slow network performance for menial tasks, and weak connectivity, which emulate basic network issues. To mitigate DoS attacks, training employees to recognise DoS, segregating backup servers from the main network, penetration testing (a method of testing the defensive capabilities of networks and seeing how many vulnerabilities there are), communication plans on how to deal with such attacks, and contacting law enforcement if breaches do happen will help with future prevention across the network.
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