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[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=dos+attack&client=ms-android-transsion-tecno-rev1&prmd=niv&sxsrf=ALeKk03zfl-lEHC9BD0O8WEsruMFKqiWfA:1611861022894&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjemcmdqr_uAhUGjRQKHWzqCagQ_AUoAnoECCcQAg&biw=360&bih=660#imgrc=jvTLHVQEQ-RTCM)
Due to increase in cyber crime perpetuated online daily, the number of phishing and hacking activities are on rise, today I was curious and did a little research about **DoS attack** also refered as *Denial of service attack*

## What is DoS attack

It's a networking terminology where an attack can be hosted against a website or any online available platform in which users will be denied direct access/connection to any particular website which the attack is hosted on.
In other words it's generally a cyber attack where hackers get access to machine or network resource  making it unavailable for users by temporarily disrupting the network service of host connected to the internet.

>Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.

Research shows servers prone to DoS attack are mainly high profile web servers such as financial services, credit card payment gateways, and more.
It's quite technical how these perpetrators work by launching their attack from different originated source which makes it quite difficult for the affected servers to easily block where these attack are flooding from.


With these flooded traffic generated by the perpetrator it will be difficult for visit to have access to the affected webpage.

There are technical two type of DoS attack
1. Distributed denial of service attack (DDoS)
2. Flood service attack

 DDoS attack is found more effective as it can result to crash of server while the flooding service attack can only cause disruption for couple of hours or days before it can be resolve by expert.

**Signs to watch out for which could portray a website or server is showing symptoms of DoS attack**

. Slow performance of network: while there could be other reason for slow network/server performance it is also advisable for web host managers to always check out for performance of their website so as to stay alert against any external threat.

. Unavailability of website: when any website has been attack using DoS it with be technically unavailable pending till when it's resolved.

**Defensive measure of DoS attack**

Early detection of illegitimate traffic using detection classified tools aiming to block those illegitimate traffic will be the best defensive measure against DoS attack. there are multiple tools used for detecting and blocking DoS attack today which means there are provided means of avoiding such attack if all necessary measure are used to protect these servers there will be minimum attack on server.

DoS attack covers a large scope of studies which will need much learning and research to fully understand the scope,  Interested users can carry on further research about DoS for full understanding.
There are available ebooks and materials online to help you get understanding about DoS.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂

## reference 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack#:~:text=A%20distributed%20denial-of-service%20(DDoS)%20attack%20occurs,of%20hosts%20infected%20with%20malware.

originally written by me [here](https://steemit.com/hive-175254/@mccoy02/understanding-denial-of-service-attack-dos)