Cybercriminals have made use of several attacking modes on computer systems and electronic devices in an attempt to steal valuable information from individuals, businesses, and government institutions alike. One of the ways through which hackers achieve this aim is the Denial;-of-Service attack. In this article, we will be going in-depth about this method of the attacker.
What Is A Denial-Of-Service Attack?
This is an intentional cyberattack that hackers carry out on computer systems, websites, online resources, and networks to prevent the rightful owners from accessing it.
Hackers usually do this by overloading the target network or website with fake system requests, preventing legitimate owners from accessing it.
This even sometimes damages the website or network. The attacks can last from a few hours to months.
How They Work
DoS attacks are increasing due to businesses and people making more digital platforms in communications and transactions with other people.
The attacks are typically launched to target digital intellectual property as well as infrastructures. The attacks are also launched to steal personal information, causing damage to the finances of the businesses they attack in the process.
The data breach attack can be targeted at a specific company or several companies at the same time. A company with high-security protocols could still get attacked through a member of its supply chain that does not have adequate security measures.
The cybercriminals then usually use the DoS approach when several companies have been selected for the attack.
Cybercriminals typically use just one internet connection and one device to send rapid and continuous requests to their target server to get their bandwidth overloaded.
They also exploit software vulnerabilities in the system and then exhaust the server’s RAM or CPU.
However, you can quickly fix the damage in the loss of service caused by the attack by implementing a firewall to deny rules. Hackers can then restrict the fished-out IP address access to the computer system or network through the firewall. They can also fish out the IP address of a DoS attack soon since they come with one IP address.
However, one DoS attack cannot be detected quickly and is known as the distributed denial-of-service attack.
Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attack (DDoS)
This kind of DoS attack uses several infected devices and connections that are spread worldwide as a botnet.
A botnet is made up of several personal devices that cybercriminals have infected without the owners of the devices knowing about it.
The machines are infected with malicious software that allows the hackers to gain control of the system to enable them to send spam and other fake requests to other systems and devices.
Servers that fall victim to a DDoS get overloaded due to the hundreds of fake traffic piled on it by the attack. Detecting the addresses, in this case, becomes challenging because the server has been attacked from multiple sources and not just one source.
DDoS attackers are sometimes used as a façade to make way for other malicious attacks, and they are initially deployed to render a website inaccessible to its owner.
Prevention
You can protect your systems and websites from DoS attacks through the following means.
Buy More Bandwidth
One of the best ways to prevent a DoS attack is to make your VPS hosting DoS resistant by having more bandwidth to ensure that you can handle spikes in traffic caused by malicious activities. Having more bandwidth will cause attackers to mostly fail since they will have similar bandwidth before they can flood the traffic of your systems.
Configure Network Against DDoS Attacks
Another way to prevent DoS attackers is by configuring your hardware to help it prevent attacks. You can configure your firewall to drop incoming packets or to block DNS responses from outside your network.
Protect Your DNS Servers
Another way is to make sure that your DNS servers are protected. Your website must have some redundancy, and you should place them in different data centres.
Conclusion
Now you have gotten some idea about what a DoS attack is and how you can prevent it. Remember that you must constantly update cybersecurity measures to avoid the latest threats that DoS attacks and malicious software come with.
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