Denial-Of-Service Attacks Essay Samples

Introduction

The Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks are referred to as the assaults from a single origin that render an online source unavailable for the intended users by trafficking it from plenty of external malicious applications. Such dangerous attacks can seriously disrupt the performances of huge industrial setups, banks, businesses, news websites, etc so that people cannot access their intended information.

Modes of DoS

DoS are possible in a variety of ways. Some of these modes are highlighted below:
Consumption of Limited Resources: Computer networks require plenty of resources for their efficient operation such as bandwidth, memory, processing speed etc. DoS can produce the shortage of these resources. Most commonly, network connectivity is the victim to hinder the communication between different devices on the network.
Using Own Resources to Exhaust Desired Functionality: The hackers or intruders can use your network or PC’s resources against you to render them ineffective for their desired functions. For example, only a specific resource could consume all the network bandwidth with bogus packets.
Flooding of Fake Network Packets: The intruders can exhaust all your available network bandwidth by flooding it with bogus applications. As a result, your subscribers will not be able to access your network.

Destruction of Configuration: A DoS attacker can alter the configuration information of your network and render it ineffective.

How to Identify and Prevent Denial-of-Service Attacks
DoS attacks could be catastrophic for the networks and computer systems. These attacks can cause huge amount of financial losses to businesses. Therefore, it is very important to guard against such attacks to avoid undesired network failures of your businesses. The following methods could be employed to identify and prevent DoS to a great extent.
Network analyzers are cheaply available that carefully monitor entire network traffic. You will easily recognize the source and its effects by viewing the logs of network analyzers regularly. You may employ a network administrator who could control network analyzer efficiently.
It is crucial to differentiate or separate malware from your desired applications. Some programs contain malicious applications embedded in them and corrupt your system as soon as you launch them. Sophisticated antivirus software could come to your rescue in such cases that can prevent DoS attacks from embedded viruses.
You can completely disable the unused resources on your network so that they don’t become the source of DoS attacks for your network. Such activities are easily visible in network analyzers when your idle resource suddenly starts flooding system with bogus requests.
You can mark a baseline for the network activity so that alerts are generated as soon as the baseline is crossed. You can then investigate the reasons for unexpected increase in system traffic.
Keep checking the network configurations regularly so as to identify and fight against DoS attacks that disturb the settings of your business systems. If possible, you can have a copy of secured configurations to be put in service in case of network clogging through configuration failure.

Conclusion

It is clear from the above description of DoS attacks is that they lead to undesired performances of your system. DoS attacks should be identified quickly before they cause severe loss for your systems. You cannot employ a specific method in different situations for identification and guarding against DoS attacks. However, you can employ a combination of preventive measures to quickly identify and then prevent such malicious assaults.