A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service
attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource
unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out,
motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists
of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet
site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or
indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or
services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card
payment gateways, and even root name servers. The term is generally used
with regards to computer networks, but is not limited to this field,
for example, it is also used in reference to CPU resource management.
One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim)
machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot
respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered
effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented
by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its
resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or
obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the
victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
Post a Comment