1.4.8

Denial of Service Attacks

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Denial of Service Attacks

Denial of service (DoS) attacks try to prevent a network from functioning by flooding it with useless traffic.

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Denial of service attacks

  • DoS attacks attempt to bring down a server by flooding it with loads of useless requests.
  • The attack aims to overload the server. This stops the server responding to legitimate requests.
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Protection against DoS attacks

  • To protect against DoS attacks, a server's firewall can blacklist (ban) any traffic from an IP address which is known to perform DoS attacks.
  • Firewalls can also monitor traffic in real time. So if a new IP address starts to send too much traffic then traffic limits can be set.
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Distributed DoS attacks

  • Distributed DoS (DDos) attacks are commonly used to overcome the blacklisting of an IP address because of a high number of requests.
  • In a DDoS attack, the requests are sent from an army of compromised machines, known as a botnet.
  • Botnet machines are infected with malware which allows a hacker to send requests from their computer.
  • The botnet can launch a huge number of simultaneous requests. The owners of the devices in the botnet might not even realise they are taking part.

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1Computer Systems

1.1Systems Architecture

1.2Memory & Storage

1.3Computer Networks, Connections & Protocols

1.4Network Security

1.5Systems Software

1.6Ethical, Legal, Cultural & Environmental Concern

2Computational Thinking, Algorithms and Programming

2.1Algorithms

2.2Programming Fundamentals

2.3Producing Robust Programs

2.4Boolean Logic

2.5Programming Languages & IDEs

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