Denial of Service

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. DoS attacks are fast becoming the weapon of choice for hackers. However, you can take the following measures to counter these attacks.

Hackers can wreak havoc without ever penetrating your system. For example, a hacker can effectively shut down your computer by flooding you with obnoxious signals or malicious code. This technique is known as a denial-of-service attack.

Hackers execute a denial-of-service attack by using one of two possible methods. The first method is to flood the target computer or hardware device with information so that it becomes overwhelmed. The alternative method is to send a well-crafted command or piece of erroneous data that crashes the target computer device.