Rapid Fire
Denial of Service (DoS) Attack
- 21 Aug 2024
- 2 min read
Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's interview with former US President Donald Trump on X (previously Twitter) was disrupted by a cyber attack called Denial of Service (DoS).
- A DoS attack means that a website cannot be accessed because it has been targeted by directing a large number of users against a particular online server at the same time.
- Bots can be used to overwhelm the network, resulting in slow loading times or a total pause in internet services.
- Types of DoS Attacks:
- Smurf Attack: Attackers use a fake IP address which actually belongs to the target machine. As the target machines respond, they end up flooding their own servers, resulting in a DoS attack.
- SYN Flood Attack: The attacker sends a request to connect to the target server but does not complete the connection. Multiple targeted incomplete connections again result in a load for the server, making it difficult to complete legitimate connections smoothly.
- Example of DDoS: Before the Paris Olympics 2024, hackers named “Anonymous Sudan” had launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on French government network infrastructure.
- The principal difference between a DoS attack and a DDoS attack is that DoS is a system-on-system attack, while the DDoS involves several systems attacking a single system.
Read More: Cyber Security
