Report: Denial-of-Service and DDoS Attacks - Challenges and Future

This report provides an overview of Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, highlighting the key differences between them, where DoS uses a single computer and internet connection, while DDoS utilizes multiple computers and connections to flood a targeted system. It identifies major challenges such as buffer overflow attacks, ICMP floods, and SYN floods, explaining how these attacks exploit vulnerabilities in network systems. The report also discusses the inadequacy of traditional defense systems against buffer overflow attacks and suggests preventative measures, including programmer education, the use of secure functions, and keeping systems updated with the latest security patches. Furthermore, the document includes a list of references used for the research, emphasizing the importance of consulting reputable sources like IEEE and ACM for credible information. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and research papers.

Running head: DENIAL-OF-SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS
Denial-Of-Service and Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attacks
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]

2
DENIAL-OF-SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS
[Author note]

3
DENIAL-OF-SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS
Denial-of-Service mainly refers security event which mainly occurs when an attacker
prevents the authentic users from accessing the computer system or the network or the device
which has been targeted. Distributed Denial-of-Service is a form of Denial-of-Service attack
(Compagno et al., 2013). The main difference between the DDoS and DoS is that the DoS attack
mainly uses of a single computer and internet connection in order to flood the system which has
been targeted whereas in the DDoS attack the attacker makes use of multiple computer and
internet connection in order to flood the resources or the system which has been targeted (He &
Zhu, 2012).
The major challenges involved in this technology includes the following:
Buffer overflow attack: The most common form of attack and this attack involves the sending of
network traffic to the address of the network which has be built by the programmers so as to
handle the system (Liu, Liu & El Saddik, 2013).
ICMP flood: This type of attack happens by leveraging the misconfigured network devices
which is generally done by sending of the spoofed packets. This is initially followed by pinging
each and every computer resent in the network rather than only on the single machine. After this
the triggering of the network is done in order to amplify the traffic (Lonea, Popescu & Tianfield,
2013). This attack can also be termed as the smurf attack or the ping of death.
SYN flood: in this type of attack a request is send in order to connect to the server but despite of
this handshake is never completed. This continues till all the ports are saturated with the requests
and none of the requests are available for eth authentic users to get connected.
After analyzing the various characteristics of the buffer overflow attack it has been seen that the
traditional defense systems are not adequate. By making use of an appropriate tool the problem

4
DENIAL-OF-SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS
of buffer overflow attack can be tackled, the programmers should be educated enough prevent t
or minimize the use of any kind of unsafe functions. From the point of view of a programmer it
should be made sure that the secure functions are used. Keeping of the system up-to-date having
the most recent security patches would greatly help in protecting the servers against various
powerful threats.

5
DENIAL-OF-SERVICE AND DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACKS
References:
Compagno, A., Conti, M., Gasti, P., & Tsudik, G. (2013, October). Poseidon: Mitigating interest
flooding DDoS attacks in named data networking. In Local Computer Networks (LCN), 2013
IEEE 38th Conference on (pp. 630-638). IEEE.
Lonea, A. M., Popescu, D. E., & Tianfield, H. (2013). Detecting DDoS attacks in cloud
computing environment. International Journal of Computers Communications & Control, 8(1),
70-78.
Liu, S., Liu, X. P., & El Saddik, A. (2013, February). Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on load
frequency control in smart grids. In Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), 2013 IEEE
PES (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
He, L., & Zhu, W. T. (2012, May). Mitigating DoS attacks against signature-based
authentication in VANETs. In Computer Science and Automation Engineering (CSAE), 2012
IEEE International Conference on (Vol. 3, pp. 261-265). IEEE.