Denial of Service (DoS) Protection

How hSo's service works

What exactly is a Denial of Service attack?

It's a cyber attack where unhelpful traffic is sent to the internet-facing bits of your IT with the intention of overwhelming the hardware or connectivity, so legitimate traffic can't get through.

Typically, an attacker might target your web site, your email server, your office firewall, your VPN gateway, your office phone system's gateway or your DNS servers. 

Using local firewalls to mitigate DoS attacks is not effective. The reason is that by the time traffic has hit the local firewall and is being discarded, it has already flooded the connection and is blocking any legitimate traffic from reaching the firewall.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a form of DoS attack that uses numerous devices and Internet connections, often dispersed into a botnet. A DDoS attack is more difficult to thwart as the target is inundated with requests from so many sources.

Many DoS attacks, for example Teardrop and Ping of Death attacks, capitalise on weaknesses in the TCP/IP protocols. In a similar way that new viruses are constantly being created by hackers, new types of DoS attacks are always emerging. Motivation includes competitive damage and blackmail.