Denial-of-service (DoS) Attacks: Tool of cyberwarfare (CultureCast #041)

Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism, terms so new that my spell-checker does not recognize them, have actually been around as long as computers.

Motivated by political reasons, anti-capitalist sentiment or just for the thrill, there are many methods of bringing computers and websites down.

One of the conceptually simplest types of attack is the denial-of-service (DoS) attack.

How can it bring sites down? Have I created an apt analogy between a mortar and brick store and the interwebs?

Find out by listening to the CultureCast above (by pressing the little blue play botton), or by clicking through and checking out the transcript and further sources.

Denial-of-Service Attacks (CultureCast #041)

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Transcript

Hey CultureCats, this is Joshua Hwang flooding you with another 90 Seconds to Culture podcast.

Denial-of-Service Attacks

Imagine you are at a bookstore. Normally, even during the busiest of times, you will eventually get service: be it at the checkout counter or just finding out the location of a book.

Now imagine that a flood of people enter the store, they are not normal people though. When asked if they want some help, they just stare blankly into space, or worse still they lie about what they want and take up more of the workers’ time. Even at the checkout, they just stand in line, but once they reach the front, they send the cashier on a wild goose chase that ends in no sale. The real customers can’t get any help and it takes hours just to checkout their books.

This is an analogy of what a denial-of-service attack is like.

Web sites of large companies, for example Yahoo, have been taken down by denial-of-service attacks. In these attacks, one computer or several computers that have been hijacked send a seemingly innocent request: a ping, for example, asks “are you there?” The web server can handle one or even several of these requests easily; however, if millions of requests come in at roughly the same time, the resources of the host will be quickly used up. Legitimate requests for information will take so long that the site has become effectively useless. All this of course costs time and money for both the web host and potential customers.

Only time will tell if new defenses to these attacks are effective.

Sources / Further Reading:
CNET News: How a basic attack crippled Yahoo
Wikipedia: Denial-of-Service attack
Best Buy Prank - Not directly related, but this podcast reminded me of this well-done prank.

[tags]technology, cyberwarfare, cyberterrorism, denial-of-service, culture, podcast[/tags]

(image from kmevans via flickr)

Tagged as: cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare, denial-of-service, Technology