As defenses against network DDOS attacks improve, hackers find a
new target Part of GCN's series on DOS attacks. Denial of
service attacks, which traditionally have bombarded networks
with an overwhelming number of requests, are getting more
efficient. And as these attacks mature, it's more important than
ever that agencies understand the kind of attack they're facing
so they can mount an effective defense. Denial of service is a
descriptive term rather than a technical one: It describes the
goal of the attack rather than the tools or techniques used.
Although there are a variety of ways to carry out the attacks,
they fall into two broad categories -- network and application.
Network DOS attacks can be fairly simple brute-force affairs,
flooding servers with high volumes of requests or packets to
overwhelm the resources. In general, the way to counter them is
to maintain enough bandwidth and computing power to withstand
the flood, but this might be impractical in a well-orchestrated
attack that can generate h