When talking about cyber attacks, the most common attacks are DOS and DDoS. So let’s see what DOS and DDoS mean and the difference between the two.
DOS Attack
DoS (Denial of Service) is an attack by a cyber attacker that disrupts the normal functioning of a website or network and prevents users from accessing the website or a certain network.
Due to these attacks, any website service is denied to the users, which is why these cyber attacks are called Denial of Service.
In DOS attacks, only one source is used to subvert the systems and thus, requests are issued to crash the relevant system through one computer with one Internet connection.
A common DOS attack nowadays is the “Buffer Overflow” attack.
In cases where the volume of a certain program exceeds its memory capacity, the extra data is collected by buffer overflow. For example, a program is written to expect 10 bytes of data, but if one request contains 15 bytes, an additional 5 bytes will be buffer overflow. So, when the buffer overflow increases greatly, the program will behave unexpectedly or crash.
So this buffer overflow attack is done by sending huge requests for buffer overflow and after crashing the system, making it unusable.
DOS Attacks are usually small-scale, so these attacks target smaller websites and systems rather than larger organizations such as Google and Amazon.
Since this DOS attack comes from a single source, it is easy to stop these attacks. Accordingly, after identifying the relevant DOS source, it is blocked (through many dos attack IP Addresses).
DDOS Attack
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is an attack that uses a computer network connected to the Internet and causes more traffic than a normal DOS attack.
Most DDOS attacks are carried out through a computer network under the control of the attacker. These are called botnets. Some botnets even consist of millions of computers and these are infected with malware or viruses so that the attacker can control them.
DDOS attacks are carried out after cyber attackers infect several computers with malware or viruses and build a computer network.
Also, because DDOS has more power than DOS attacks, these are also compared to ransomware attacks that disable systems until the ransom is paid.
Because they use several computers anywhere in the world through an Internet connection, it is difficult to track them, so a DDOS attack is considered a much higher threat than a DOS attack.
There are two parts to DDoS attacks. One is volume-based (volumetric) attacks and the other is DNS server attacks. A volume-based attack targets a network bandwidth and blocks it by sending requests.
In a DNS server attack, the targeted server is subjugated by entering into a relevant server and sending fake information using fake IP addresses.
Differences between DOS and DDOS
01. Number of connected devices:- DOS uses one device and one internet connection while DDOS uses multiple devices.
02. Threat level:- DOS attacks are considered less threat than DDOS. It is easy to stop because it uses a single source.
03. Use of Malware:- There is no use of malware in DOS and in DDOS attacks there is the possibility of infecting computers and creating botnets by using malware.
04. Level of Maneuverability:- DOS attacks are easier to handle than DDOS attacks. All it requires is a single device and an internet connection.
05. Security:- It becomes very difficult to protect against a DDOS attack than a DOS attack. That’s because DDOS can attack the system from many places and send a lot of data at once than DOS attacks.
How to protect against DOS and DDOS attacks?
No matter what computer threats we talk about, the main thing we need to do is to keep our Anti-virus and Anti-malware software updated.
Also, do not go to suspicious links (with a lock on the URL) and only go to safe websites.
So if these methods are done correctly, you can protect yourself from these attacks.
