Application-Level Denial of Service

Synonyms

Smart/algorithmic denial of service

Related Concepts

Availability; DoS Detection; DoS Pushback; Jamming Attack Defense; Network Bandwidth DoS; Overlay-Based DoS Defenses; Packet-Dropping Attack; SYN Cookie Defense; SYN Flood Attack; Trust Management

Definition

Application-level denial of service (DoS) attacks are a class of emerging DoS attacks that target higher layers in an application stack as against network layer attacks. Application-level DoS attacks essentially mimic flash crowds with the goal of severely crippling an electronic service and evading traditional DoS filters by morphing the attack requests so that they are nearly indistinguishable from the legitimate requests.

Background

DoS attacks attempt to render an electronic service unavailable to its intended users. Traditional DoS attacks typically refer to flooding-based attacks that attempt to inundate a Web server with numerous requests with the goal of exhausting the server’s computational or networking...