Denial of Service (DoS) Attack
A denial of service (DoS) attack causes a service at a given host to fail or to become unavailable to legitimate users.
- resource exhaustion DoS attacks
- overload a service by using up CPU, system RAM, disk space, or network bandwidth
- possible for DoS to exploit design failures or other vulns in application software
- physical DoS may involve cutting telephone lines or network cabling or switch off power
- may be motivated by:
- malicious desire to cause trouble
- precursor to a spoofing or data exfiltration attack
- DoS can assist these attacks by diverting attention away from the real target
- e.g., blinding attack attempts to overload a logging or alerting system with events
- weaknesses:
- requires a lot of bandwidth
- easy to block by IP
Info
- Threats can be:
- purposeful malicious actors
- or inadvertent, accidental, and non-malicious
- e.g., accidental DoS by connecting two wall ports and creating a switching loop
- users can also create inadvertent vulnerabilities
- e.g., shadow IT could be vectors for exploits that aren’t mitigated by security controls
- devices or apps used in the workplace without authorization