FreeBSD® Unleashed

Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks

While it isn't technically a security issue, another type of malicious network activity has nonetheless become quite important to system administrators recently. This is the Denial of Service, or DOS, attack.

DOS attacks don't involve any compromise of a system's security or privacy. Rather, they are simply brute-force floods, sending so much traffic over a network that legitimate traffic is lost in the shuffle. The goal is often to crash the server through sheer overwhelming volume of data and number of requests. These kinds of attacks are much harder to defend against than directed hack attacks, which can be foiled through the use of IPFW, PortSentry, and the other tools we have already discussed. The impact ...