Combating DoS/DDoS Attacks Using Cyberoam

2 Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have increased in number. Take note: saying THAT would be a gross understatement. Back in the comfortable past, only people with specialized knowledge and a good amount of resources were able to launch such high-end attacks. Today, anyone with access to the Internet and minimal technical know-how can very well execute and succeed in launching such attacks. In fact, these attacks have become a favourite tool not only among criminal enterprises and political operatives, but also disgruntled customers, ex-employees and social protesters. Findings from a recent study titled " European Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks & Impact Report " by Neustar, a provider of real-time information and analysis, reveal a substantial increase in the 1 complexity, length and cost of DDoS attacks on businesses. 40 percent of companies estimate hourly losses near $150,000-a 470 percent increase from last year; 26 percent of companies said brand/consumer trust is the biggest loss as a result of a DDoS attack; more than one-third of DDoS attacks affected businesses from one to two days. A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to make a system unavailable to its intended users. One common method of attack involves saturating the target system with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered unavailable. Another method is to exploit an open vulnerability of the target system in such a way that it becomes useless for any further service. A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is the attack where a collection of compromised systems perform a DoS Attack on a single target. Nowadays, such attacks are essentially launched using Botnets. A Botnet is a network of compromised systems whose scope typically extends across the globe. Hackers take control of many vulnerable computers at a time by infecting them with malware (called " bots "). These computers then become "zombies " , which operate as part of a powerful "botnet" controlled by a master called " bot-herd ". After a computer is taken over by a bot, it can be used to carry out a variety of automated tasks like spreading viruses and spyware, stealing personal information, click fraud, and the primary one among them being DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks are fuelled by the increasing popularity and ease of acquisition of such Botnets. …