Good Critical Thinking About Denial Of Service Attack

Denial-of-service attacks are aimed at shutting down access to a website by means of targeting the server with substantial requests in order to clog the system (“Understanding Denial-of-Service Attacks”).The web server in turn fails to acknowledge the genuine users trying to access the website. Therefore, through this malicious attack, a user can fail to access his/her email, bank account or website online. When a user types a Uniform Resource Identifier (URL) in the web browser, it is, in fact, a request to the server of that website to provide the information requested. Therefore, if the server is preoccupied with a thousand of other fake requests, the server will not be able to respond to the genuine request.
In today’s time, several important transactions are being conducted online. For example, online banking has seen a rise throughout the world. Moreover, in the developed countries, government departments have also created online systems to file returns, complaints or to apply for licenses and the like. When the whole system is being run online, denial of service attacks can hugely affect the routine processes. By bringing the banking system down, the whole country can be deprived of online services. Therefore, I strongly believe that denial of service attacks can form an essential component of cyber terrorism or cyber warfare.
An example of such a case is that of Estonia. It blamed Russia for launching denial of service attacks as a part of cyber warfare (“Estonia hit by 'Moscow cyber war'”, 2007). These attacks targeted the government websites also. Estonia has a “paperless” government to its credit and, therefore, the denial-of-service attacks meant huge trouble for the country.

References

Estonia hit by 'Moscow cyberwar’. (2007, May 17). Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6665145.stm
Understanding Denial-of-Service Attacks. (2009, Nov. 4). Retrieved from https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/tips/ST04-015