Network Know-How

Denial of Service Attacks

A denial of service (DoS) attack occurs when your network receives a very large number of incoming connection attempts that overloads the network's capacity to respond. The volume of traffic forces the computers and routers in the network to operate at or beyond their capacity, which causes them to either flood the network with useless traffic, disrupt connections among machines, or completely disrupt network service. For example, a mail bomb attack might generate tens of thousands of useless email messages.

A DoS attack can make it impossible to do anything else on the network, or it can block legitimate incoming traffic, such as requests for access to a web server or exchange of email. Most DoS attacks are aimed at large ...