DoS and DDoS: Modern Cyber-Attacks and Future Research

This report discusses the modern cyber-attacks of DoS and DDoS, their impact on organizations, and future research directions for detection and mitigation.

DoS and DDoS
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ABSTRACT – The below stated report will deal with the
modern ongoing cyber-attacks focusing on the two types of
attacks that are DoS and DDoS. The important focus areas
are explained in the project along with the future research
methodologies.
Keywords— DoS, DDoS, Applications, Challenges, Future Aspects
INTRODUCTION
This report deals with the network vulnerabilities that is
mainly used by the hackers mainly to extort money from
certain organizations that relies on the websites which are
accessible. Many legitimate businesses are facing this type of
problem in modern times. This report deals with the two types
of major network vulnerabilities that persists now a days
which are likely to be Denial of Service and Distributed Denial
of Service. The further report will elaborately describe the
various aspects of these two attacks.
A. Explanation of the theories
The Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are said to be the form
of the cyber-attack in which hackers makes the network
environment or firewall of the network to be temporarily
useless as well as unavailable to others by creating disruption,
jamming, flooding as well as crashing the server to not using it
(Zhang et al., 2015). The prevention of the denial of service is
mainly impossible. This is due to the fact that the network is of
distributed structure that is each node of a network is
incorporated with other networks that further connects to
other networks. The control of a firewall administrator is very
limited to the local elements present in the network.
Moreover the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) works
more commonly like a DoS attack but the process of DoS
follows the procedure of the congestion to be distributed from
one computer whereas the DDoS sends the congestion from
many computers within the network environment (Yi et al.,
2016). This happens due to the fact that most of the servers
possess a recognition system regarding pattern that prevents
many requests from a same source. The DDoS is the attack has
affected most of the great web servers like Microsoft as well
as Yahoo.
B. DoS Attack
DoS Attack may be categorized with the help of two
accurate approaches that is denying the access through the
crashing of a service by exploitation or through flooding of the
services to that point which the system has no access. When a
denial of service attack happens the machine gets automatic
shutdown thus making it inaccessible for the end users. The
identified victims of this attack is said to be the servers in the
fields of commerce, banking as well as media companies.
These attack also focused on the government as well as trade
organizations. The most popular flood attacks include the
stated methodologies.
 Attacks regarding buffer overflow: This is stated as
the most common DoS attack. The concept of this
type of attack is to send maximum number of traffic
to the network environment thus providing
congestion to the network environment. It also
includes the designing of exploited bugs for specific
applications present in the network environment.
 ICMP Flood: This type of attack leverages the
misconfigured devices in the network through
continuous sending of spoofed packets on the
computers that are present in the network which is
targeted. The amplification of the traffic is done by
triggering the network.
 SYN Flood: This type of attack always sends request
regarding connection of the server but the handshake
is not completed.
Moreover DoS attacks basically exploits the vulnerabilities
that tends to crash the targeted server. Due to this type of
attack the systems present in a network gets extremely
destabilized in such a manner that it can’t be accessed as well
as used.
C. DDoS Attack
Another elementary type of the DoS attack may be stated
as the Distributed Denial of Service. This is an attack that is
quite similar to DoS (Alkasassbeh et al., 2016). In this attack
multiple systems are targeted by a single target. The host
distribution that mainly defines a DDoS attack, helps the
attacker with multiple advantages:
 The attacker can leverage a maximum amount of
machine to create disruption to the systems.
 The detection of the attack location is very difficult as
there are attacking systems distribution is done on a
random basis.
 The shutting down of the multiple machines is not
possible at a single instance.
 The identification of the real party that visualized the
attack is very difficult.
LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Yan et al., (2016), as Cloud Computing is a
technological field that is continuously growing as well as it
has become an essential component of any business that is
dealing with information systems the possibility of DoS and
DDoS attacks might raise more frequently. With these attacks
it will be very easy to destroy the facility of the cloud
computing and affecting the organizations with the disruptions
of the facilities to their end users. This attacks tends to make
an attempt for making the network resources to be
unavailable to the intended users that are trying to access
these resources. DDoS attacks may be carried out by bots or
by more than one person whereas DoS attacks are carried out
by a single person. A bot is said to be a corrupted or

compromised device that intends to affect the computer
systems present within the network environment.
According to Yan & Yu (2015), DoS may be explained as a
time frame in which the communication within the present
network systems is disrupted or blocked with the intervention
of a malicious or malevolent attacker. These attacks can
disrupt the customer data or information that is stored within
the organization. This will put an adverse effect in the business
running procedure and further will disrupt the whole
information present in the network environment if the
organization. The cyber attackers uses these type of attacks for
extorting money by accessing their stored network data thus
they target the bank customers mainly and the banking
network systems.
D. Tools used for DoS and DDoS
In case of a DoS attack a huge range of array programs are
used for the launching. For DoS MyDoom as well as Slowloris
are said to be the tools that are associated with this attack.
These tools are embedded as malwares to launch the attacks
within the organization’s network environment. Stacheldraht
is said to be an exclusive tool that is used by the DDoS
attackers (Guo et al., 2015). This tool uses a layered structure
for launching the attack. In this structure the attacker takes
the help of the client programs in regards to connect the
handlers that the system are comprised of the commands that
enhances the DDoS attacks. Moreover, the most important
tool that is used for the launch of DoS attack is known as the
Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC). This tool is freely available all over
the internet and can be used by a single user to perform this
type of attack. Another attacking tool that is used by the DoS
attackers is XOIC. This is also a free tool that is available and
the attackers uses this type of tool to launch this attack in any
network environment of an organization (Befekadu, Gupta &
Antsaklis, 2015).
E. Challenges or issues faced by the organizations
With respect to the attacks that are happening in the network
environment of an organization it primarily hampers the users
data present in the server database of the organization. This
further leads to the total encryption of the data and provide it
to the attackers. Then this data is used by the attackers to
perform money extortion as well as use the personal data to
perform more cyber-criminal activities (Asri & Pranggono,
2015). This hampers the financial constraints of the
organization as well as of the customers associated with the
organization. In the modern era there is an alarming trend
with respect to this type of attacks. Moreover, the attacks
hamper the market reputation of the organization in which
the attacks are launched. As this type of attacks are performed
by the tools that are readily available in the market and also
are free to use the cyber attackers tends to use perform this
attack (Bhandari, Sangal & Kumar, 2016). There are many
types of DDoS attacks but ten goal or objective of this attack is
always the same that is to breach the information present in
the network environment of the organization (Biron, Dey &
Pisu, 2018). This can hamper the company’s ongoing business
policy and thus preventive measures must be taken for the
following attacks.
F. Identification and Mitigation procedures
The primary detection of DoS as well as DDoS attacks can be
done by the fact that the performance of the overall network
structure present in an organization decreases when this
attack is launched in a specified organization. However it may
be challenging to identify this attacks. The first source from
where the attack may be identified is stated as the method of
Signature based Detection. This mechanism is used to identify
the signatures of the attacks within the network from the
normal malicious attacks (Mallikarjunan, Muthupriya &
Shalinie, 2016). However in many instances the signs of the
attacks remains unobserved as there is approximately no sign
that may differ these attacks from the normal malicious
attacks. SNORT is defined as a very popular network disruption
detection tool. This mechanism depends on the exact pattern
matching, henceforth the difference in the performance of the
network environment is well detected by this tool. Moreover
to detect a DDoS attack the most effective tool is said to be
the DWARD. This detects the anomaly of the traffic congestion
within the network environment thus keeping a track monitor
for the detailed traffic happening within the network
environment of the organization. Moreover these attacks can
target the cloud mechanisms of the organization. To prevent
these attacks from the cloud storage the best policies that are
adhered can be said as the prevention of the attack, the
detection of the attack as well as mitigation of the attacks with
the help of effective tools (Osanaiye, Choo & Dlodlo, 2016).
G. Future Research Direction
The future aspect in accordance to the above stated
attacks may be stated that the identification techniques must
be improved in accordance to the detection of the attacks as
well as more enhanced tools must be implemented for
mitigation of these attacks. The most important mechanism
that must be researched for the mitigation of the risks
associated with these attacks are said to be Filtering or
limiting the rate of the traffic flow within the network
environment as soon as the attack is identified. The capability
based response is also said to be an effective procedure in the
mitigation of these attacks. This research methodologies on
the identification as well as the mitigation policies is said to
put a positive effect on the future occurrence of attacks.
CONCLUSION
Thus from the above statement it can be concluded that the
assignment deals with the most important cyber security attack
happening now a days. The analysis of these attacks are briefly
explained along with the challenges faced by an organization
due to this attack. The report concludes with the research
direction methodologies on the aspects of the mitigation
techniques that can be availed by an organization to prevent
themselves form this type of attack.
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