DoS attack vs DDoS attack – what is its main comparison? We will explore this today!
What is a DoS attack?
Dos is short of a Denial of Service attack. In this attack, a single attacker targets a device, trying to make it unavailable to its users. It does it by flooding it with traffic or exploiting vulnerabilities of a network protocol.
While DoS attacks are smaller than DDoS attacks, they can still have significant impacts on the availability and performance of a victim’s device. They can slow down, crash, and disrupt the normal processes of a server.
The DoS attacks are created from a single source, so it is easier to perform them.
One thing that is extremely bad for the attackers is that DoS attacks are a lot easier to be traced. As we mentioned, they come from a single device. The attacker needs to hide his or her device quite well if he or she does not want to be traced back.
Examples of DoS attacks
- Ping flood attacks: In this type of DoS attack, the cuber-criminal sends a large number of pings to a victim’s server or network in an attempt to overwhelm it with traffic.
- SYN flood attacks: Similar to the Ping flood, but with SYN packets.
- Protocol attacks: Here, the attacker uses a smarter approach. He or she uses protocol vulnerabilities to overwhelm the targeted device.
What is a DDoS attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a more advanced and powerful version of a DoS attack. In a DDoS attack, multiple attackers’ devices are organized (Botnet) and target a single device or network. The generated traffic is much larger, therefore, more significant disruption in comparison to a DDoS attack.
In general, DDoS attacks are more difficult to defend against and can cause more damage than DoS attacks. This is because they use multiple attack sources and often different types of devices, making it harder to identify and block the traffic.
DDoS attacks are a bigger threat to the security and availability of computer systems. They have become the preferred “weapon” for most modern cybercriminals. They are so popular that, on the Dark Web, whoever can hire a DDoS attack as a service and target a business like yours.
Such attacks can cause great financial losses for the victim. The truth is that DDoS attacks are prevalent, and no business is truly safe. To be protected, you will need an additional DDoS protection service, or else you are at the mercy of the attacks.
Examples of DDoS attacks
- Application-level attacks: Here, the attack targets a specific application on a server. It can flood a web server with the request until it can no longer respond and crashes.
- Volumetric attacks: Also known as traffic attacks, involve huge traffic that targets a victim’s device and tries to disable it.
- Protocol attacks: These attacks target a specific Internet protocol like TCP, HTTP, or UDP, and by using vulnerabilities in it, they overwhelm the victim’s device.
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Conclusion
In short for DoS vs DDoS attack, The DDoS attack is larger and more dangerous than the DoS attack. It involves multiple attack vectors toward the target or targets, and that makes it powerful.
