Denial of Service defense

Most Distributed or standard Denial of Service (DDoS/DoS) tools are open source utilities written in C# or Java. We demonstrated in Chapter 6, Web Attacks, how a single person using a DoS tool can have a devastating impact to a business by limiting access to online sources or taking down a website. DDoS/DoS tools are advertised as web application stress-testing tools. Although they could potentially be used for that, in many cases they are used for nefarious purposes.

DDoS/DoS attacks in most cases require abusing network infrastructure hardware. One of the common methods to defend against DDoS/DoS is configuring network devices that can handle large influx of packets, the ability to detect anomalous behavior, and traffic patterns. Malicious traffic identified should be automatically filtered to avoid interruption of service. Tools from vendors, such as load-balancers and web application firewalls, do a great job of detecting and defending against volumetric and...