Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks continue to present a significant security threat to corporations two years after a spate of incidents brought down several high-profile sites, including those of Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc., users and analysts report. Since then, several technologies . . .
Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks continue to present a significant security threat to corporations two years after a spate of incidents brought down several high-profile sites, including those of Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc., users and analysts report. Since then, several technologies have emerged that help users detect and respond to DOS attacks far more quickly and effectively than before. But the increasingly sophisticated attack methods and the growing range of systems targeted in DOS attacks continue to pose a challenge. "In that sense, the tools are always only trying to catch up" with the threat, said Raj Raghavan, a vice president at SiegeWorks Enterprise Security Solutions, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based integrator of security technologies.

DOS attacks make computer systems inaccessible by flooding servers or networks with useless traffic so that legitimate users can no longer gain access to those resources. In distributed DOS (DDOS) attacks, malicious hackers use hundreds and sometimes even thousands of previously compromised computer systems to launch assaults against a network or server.

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