Ethical Hacking: Techniques, Tools, and Countermeasures, 4th Edition

Denial of Service Attacks

An older type of attack that still plagues the Internet and the computer systems attached to it is the denial of service (DoS) attack, which is a threat against one of the core tenets of security: availability. A DoS attack is designed to target a service or resource and deny access to it by legitimate users. This section examines this simple form of hacking in detail, including what it can do as well as how it works.

A DoS attack works by tying up valuable resources that could be used to service legitimate needs and users. A DoS attack functions like this: Imagine someone calling your mobile phone over and over again. At some point, the person might call often enough that no one else could call you, nor could you call ...