Denial of Service

DoS is where servers stop providing service to its customers, an example would be when you have lot of people all trying to access one website at once, the server can’t handle it and collapses so therefore no-one can get on it. Other ways off attacking could be in a physical way by unplugging a server from the network if they have access. If they are not able to unplug the server physically, then they could send large armies of zombie computer viruses to start a large scale attack against the target. To prevent a DoS attack you can download a software called 'dot-defender', this software inspects your HTTP traffic and checks the packets against the rules such as allowing or denying protocols or IP addresses to stop web applications from being exploited. This software is easily downloaded within a few clicks, it is very strong against attacks and doesn't need any hardware to be installed. Reasons why someone might want to launch a DoS attack are that it might be a criminal attempt to blackmail an online company. Another reason would be if someone didn't agree with a websites political views, they would launch a DoS attack as a way of expressing this. They might not even have a reason to launch the attack, they could pick a random domain and launch the attack.