A DoS (Denial of Service) attack is a type of cyber attack that aims to stop or slow down a system, network, or server by overwhelming it with a very large volume of requests or data, making it unable to respond to legitimate requests.
The objectives of this attack are:
1. Denial of service: Stopping the targeted systems or networks from providing their services to users.
2. Slow down performance: Overloading the system to the point where it becomes very slow to respond.
There are several types of DoS attacks:
1. Flood Attack: A very large number of requests are sent to the targeted server in a short time, causing its resources to be completely consumed.
2. Buffer Overflow Attack: A software vulnerability is exploited by injecting more data than the system can handle, causing it to crash.
3. SYN Flood: Fake connection requests are sent to a server so that it starts allocating resources to each request without receiving a response from the sending party, which slows down the system.
A more sophisticated version of this attack is a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, where the attack is carried out from several sources at once, making it difficult to stop, because the attack comes from hundreds or thousands of devices at the same time.
