In today’s digital world, organizations face a big challenge of cyber threats. One of the major threats is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. A Denial of Service (DoS) is a type of cyberattack that is aimed to disrupt the normal functioning of a targeted server, service, or network. It disrupts normal functioning with excessive requests or malicious traffic. Businesses and individuals rely on the internet to understand the outcomes of (DoS) attacks and how to prevent them.
In this blog, you will get to understand the details of the Denial of Service (DoS) attack, how it works, its potential consequences, and some of the best practices to protect against such attacks.
What is a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack?
It is a malicious attempt to block or restrict access to a network or service by attacking internet traffic. The attacker aims to make the target system, service, or network unavailable to its authentic users. This can cause downtime, financial losses, and reputational damage to a company or an individual. Other cyberattacks might expose the weak points in a system or steal sensitive data. The DoS attacks focus on disabling or disturbing the targeted service.
The basic work behind the DoS attack is very simple. The attacker sends a huge amount of traffic, data packets, or requests to the target server. It’s capacity to handle authentic requests. As a result, the server or network becomes slow, not so responsive, and completely inaccessible.
Types of Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks
There are several types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. The below-mentioned ones are primary ones.
1. Volumetric Attacks:
Volumetric attacks are designed to attack the target system with an excessive amount of traffic. It consumes the bandwidth and resources. These types of attacks often involve sending a large number of packets, such as ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) packets or DNS (Domain Name System) queries, to suffocate the target with data.
2. Protocol Attacks:
Protocol attacks target weaknesses in specific network protocols, such as TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) or HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). For example, a SYN attack disrupts the TCP handshake process by sending incomplete connection requests. The server resources prevent from responding to the authenticated users.
3. Application Layer Attacks:
Application layer DoS attacks target exposures within the application or software layer. These attacks are difficult to detect because they replicate authentic traffic patterns. Examples of this are HTTP traffic, where attackers attack the web server with HTTP requests. This causes the webserver to become slow or non-responsive.
4. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS):
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a more advanced form of the Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Multiple systems or botnets are used to create this attack. The traffic does not come from a single source, it comes from several distributed devices. This makes it more difficult to separate harmful traffic and protect the service that is targeted.
How Does a Denial Service (DoS) Attack Work?
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack works by taking advantage of the vulnerabilities in the network or server’s communication processes. Here is the procedure for the same.
1. Overloading the Network:
The attacker targets the network with a huge volume of traffic that can disrupt the available bandwidth. As a result, the server or network is not able to process authentic user requests.
2. Exhausting System Resources:
In a protocol attack, such as a SYN flood, the attacker sends incomplete connection requests. They consume resources and prevent them from staying in touch with authentic connections. The system’s CPU and memory resources get exhausted by handling these invalid requests.
3. Application Layer Exhaustion:
In application layer attacks, attackers take a toll on the weaknesses in the web servers or databases to send high volumes of requests, that are a resource-consuming process. These requests can consume memory and CPU cycles that make them slow and unresponsive
How to Protect Against Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks?
Though it is not easy to prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, organizations can take effective measures to reduce the risk and impact of such attacks. Some of the best ways to prevent DoS attacks are as follows:
1. Implement Traffic Filtering:
Traffic filtering technologies like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) help to identify and block malicious traffic before it reaches the target system. These tools detect suspicious patterns and filter out invalid requests.
2. Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs):
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help distribute traffic across multiple servers. This reduces the load on any single server. This makes it harder for attackers to attack the entire system and ensures availability.
3. Rate Limiting:
Rate limiting involves the restriction of the number of requests that can be made to a server within a specified period. One can limit the rate of incoming requests, and organizations can prevent systems from being exploded with traffic and reduce the impact of DoS attacks.
4. Redundancy and Load Balancing:
Deploying redundant systems and load balancing can ensure that traffic is distributed across multiple servers or data centers. This prevents a single server from becoming a single point of failure during a DoS attack.
5. Leverage DDoS Protection Services:
Many cloud-based security providers offer DDoS protection services that can be detected and reduced. These services can absorb large volumes of traffic and filter out difficult requests before they reach the target audience.
Conclusion
A Denial of Service (DoS) attack can lead to serious cybersecurity risk, causing downtime, financial losses, and reputational harm. It is necessary that every individual and organization understands the different types of DoS attacks and should take several protective measures. Some of the protective measures include traffic filtering and Cand DNs. This will also keep businesses safe from harmful online services.
