Internet Denial of Service: Attack and Defense Mechanisms

Chapter 4. How Attacks Are Waged

A DDoS attack has to be carefully prepared by the attacker. She first recruits the agent army. This is done by looking for vulnerable machines, then breaking into them, and installing her attack code. The attacker next establishes communication channels between machines, so that they can be controlled and engaged in a coordinated manner. This is done using either a handler/agent architecture or an IRC-based command and control channel. Once the DDoS network is built, it can be used to attack as many times as desired against various targets.

4.1 Recruitment of the Agent Network

Depending on the type of denial of service planned, the attacker needs to find a sufficiently large number of vulnerable machines to use ...