A
denial of service attack prevents a website from functioning properly, sometimes by swamping it with more traffic than it can handle.
DISTRIBUTED
DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK PREVENTION AND TREATMENT STRATEGIES
SOCA took their website offline for several hours on June 20 after it appeared to be a victim of a distributed
denial of service attack. Hacking group LulzSec claimed responsibility.
This is called a Distributed
Denial of Service Attack.
According to a study by Internet security company Arbor Networks, the average
denial of service attack over the past year was 349 megabits per second, 28 times slower than the stream Wikileaks reported.
"Nearly all of the other websites we've released are crashing after being targeted by repeat
denial of service attacks. The attacks are still coming on strong, but our web team is working to make sure we're back online," Walker said in an e-mail.
For example, Dan Brenner, assistant superintendent of New York's Roslyn Public Schools says a recent
denial of service attack slowed their online systems significantly, and "caused true heartache for the technical staff." Brenner says it took three long nights for the district technology expert Ed Salina Jr.
Fortunately, email already offers a solution for both the
Denial of Service attack and collateral blocking.
Hidden inside the worm is a clock, ticking down until early May when it is designed to launch a distributed
denial of service attack against three websites with an educational focus--www.educ.ch, is designed to launch a distributed
denial of service attack against three websites with an educational focus--www.educ.ch, www.medinfo.ufl.edu and www.nibis.de--based in Switzerland, USA, and Germany Two earlier spreading variants of Netsky (Netsky-X and Netsky-Y) have also scheduled attacks against the same websites, but these are programmed to cease at the end of April.
"If there's one thing nice about a
denial of service attack, it's that it's not subtle, it's like a freight train crashing through your network," said Julian.
In a
denial of service attack like the one Bitfinex has experienced, an attacker attempts to overwhelm the systems of its victim by directing a massive amount of traffic at their servers.