 - On the Internet, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. The flood of incoming messages to the target system essentially forces it to shut down, thereby denying service to the system to legitimate users.
A hacker (or, if you prefer, cracker) begins a DDoS attack by exploiting a vulnerability in one computer system and making it the DDoS "master." It is from the master system that the intruder identifies and communicates with other systems that can be compromised. The intruder loads cracking tools available on the Internet on multiple -- sometimes thousands of -- compromised systems. With a single command, the intruder instructs the controlled machines to launch one of many flood attacks against a specified target. The inundation of packets to the target causes a denial of service.
While the press tends to focus on the target of DDoS attacks as the victim, in reality there are many victims in a DDoS attack -- the final target and as well the systems controlled by the intruder.
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Learn more about Web Application Security |
| Web Application Attacks Learning Guide: This guide explains how Web application attacks occur, identifies Web application attacks, and provides Web application security tools and tactics to protect against them. |
| Information security book excerpts and reviews: Visit the Information Security Bookshelf for book reviews and free chapter downloads. |
| Quiz: Could you detect an application attack?: Test your application security awareness, review common application attacks and learn how to improve application layer logging to detect and protect against these attacks. |
| Web Application Attacks Learning Guide: This guide explains how Web application attacks occur, identifies Web application attacks, and provides Web application security tools and tactics to protect against them. |
| State-based attacks: Session management: This excerpt reviews session management techniques developers can use to protect against session hijacking and other Web application attacks. |
| Content Spoofing: This excerpt from "Preventing Web Attacks with Apache" explains how content spoofing attacks exploit vulnerabilities and how to use Apache to protect against them. |
| LAST UPDATED: |
10 Jul 2009
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