[lug] DOS attack

[Scott A. Herod]

Hi,

  Denial Of Service.  DDoS is Distributed Denial of Service.  Apparently
the recent MS attack was a DoS attack while the attack last year against
Yahoo and others was a DDoS.  ( The person responsible for those just 
plead guilt to something like 64 counts of computer crimes in Canada. )
Typically, in a DDoS, the person first breaks into a number of other
machines and starts all of them flooding a site as well.

  Basically, it is an attack that floods your machines with request for
information.  To cheat ( and make your machine do even more work ) the
request are improperly formatted so that your machine tries to respond
to some non-existant address with an error message.

Max Holdcraft wrote:
> 
> As a newbe may I ask a dumb question? What is a DOS attack?
> 
> >>> "Scott A. Herod" <herod at interact-tv.com> 01/30/01 12:42PM >>>
> Hello,
> 
> Speaking of DOS attacks, in one of the articles about the recent
> MS attack it was suggested that people whose machines are hijacked
> and then used for DDoS attacks should be held liable for damages.
> 
> <http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/computing/01/29/security.hackers.reut/index.html>
> ( last couple of paragraphs )
> 
> I find that idea a bit disconcerting but it is somewhat like regulations
> requiring you to keep firearms locked up in your home.  ( Of course
> getting
> a gun safe is a lot easier than trying to figure out how to set up and
> maintain
> an ipchains firewall. )
> 
> Scott