DoS Attack Types - Kinds & Forms of Denial of Service Attack
You may be aware that the term "DoS attack" is short of Denial of Service attack, but you may not be aware that there are different types of DoS attack. Although they are all, essentially, variations on a theme, those variations can make a difference in how you handle them.
Types of DoS attack
Different forms & kinds of DoS Attacks are mentioned below;
There are two, possibly three, types of DoS attack. These are DoS attacks, DDoS attacks, and unintended DDoS attacks. Here are the main characteristics of each.
1. DoS attacks
DoS attacks were one of the original internet threats, but these days they’re of little more than academic interest. This is because DoS attacks only involve one computer. In the early days of the internet (and dial-up modems), one computer was enough to bring down, or at least cripple, a website. These days, however, even the smallest, hobby-websites could probably absorb a DoS attack without any real issue.
2. DDoS attacks
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service and as the name suggests, it’s the updated version of old-school DoS attacks. DDoS attacks fall into two broad categories. These are infrastructure-level DDoS attacks (levels three and four of the OSI seven-layer model) and application-level DDoS attacks (levels six and seven of the OSI seven-layer model).
Infrastructure-level DDoS attacks are essentially the same as old-school DoS attacks except they involve multiple computers, hence they do make an impact. That said, they are still extremely unsophisticated and so tend to be easy to block, provided that you are doing a decent job of monitoring your internet traffic.
Application-level DDoS attacks, by contrast, are a lot more sophisticated. This means that they take more technical skills to create, but they also take more technical skills to resolve. The basic idea behind application-level DDoS attacks is that they target a critical part of a website, such as a login page or a payment page. They use enough traffic to slow down if not bring down that area while staying undetected for as long as possible.
3. Unintended DDoS attacks
Unintended DDoS attacks are when a website or part of a website becomes deluged by legitimate traffic to the point where the service is crippled or completely brought down. This often happens as a result of media or social-media exposure. You may have seen news articles about how a celebrity has been seen with a certain item and the company’s website has then crashed because so many people have rushed to buy it.
You may not envisage your products or services ever being used by a celebrity, but the basic idea applies regardless of your business model. If you receive an unexpected endorsement from someone who matters to your customer base, the resulting traffic may look, feel, and essentially have the same effect as a genuine DDoS attack.
There is, however, one common and noticeable difference between intended and unintended DDoS attacks. The former tend to emanate from countries where you typically have few to no customers whereas the latter tend to emanate from countries where you do have an established customer base.
Protecting your website from DoS attacks
The bad news is that you cannot really prevent people from launching DDoS attacks against you. The good news is that, if you are well-prepared, you can mitigate their impact. Here are some tips.
Buy as much bandwidth as you can afford
Think of your bandwidth as being like a pipe. The broader your pipe, the harder attackers have to work to flood it. This is your first and most obvious defense against DoS attacks.
Use a robust website vulnerability scanner (and a DDoS mitigation service)
Although there are plenty of website vulnerability scanner on the market, the core of any decent option is an anti-malware scanner and a web applications firewall. For DoS attacks, it’s the latter which matters. Your second line of defense against DoS attacks is to set your firewall so that it automatically blocks as much traffic as possible, while still permitting the traffic you want.
If DDoS attacks are a particular concern for you might want to consider signing up for a DDoS mitigation service. These are similar to firewalls but they are optimized for DDoS attacks (whereas firewalls are more general) and only operate when a DDoS attack is in progress.
Make your architecture as flexible and scalable as possible
This is recommended for all kinds of reasons, including protecting against DoS attacks. In the context of DoS, you want to look at measures such as smart DNS lookup, content distribution networks, and load-balancers.
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