Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attack

A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is a method that is meant to restrict a user’s access to a computer or a network. The attackers use many types of DoS attacks, such as buffer overflow attacks and ICMP floods. Flood types of DoS are aimed to crash the network with the request that increases the volume and consumes bandwidth capacity of networks. The other kind of DoS aims to crash the services. For crashing services, the attackers use exploits in the system to crash the system. There is also a

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks

It is one of the most common attack types of DoS. It uses a flooding method to attack the system. The difference between DoS and DDoS relies on the name of the DDoS. In DDoS, attackers use various machines to attack a single target. These machines make the tracking process of the attacker harder. Since they use different sources, attackers choose this more often because it is more effective than using one computer.

DoS Attacks in the Cryptocurrency World

Like every network of operation, blockchains are also the target of DoS attacks. DoS attack is the strongest when it targets a centralized network. However, blockchains are decentralized, making it harder to attack a blockchain. It is nearly impossible to change the previously validated blocks since if the attackers target several nodes, the remaining nodes work to continue the operations. The attacked nodes also can return to work and sync with the other nodes when the attack ends. There is also one type of DoS attack explicitly used for cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain denial-of-service (BDS)

This DoS specifically targets the blockchain networks that use a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. The attackers send fake proofs of verification to discourage the legitimate miners from verifying transactions. However, DoS attacks are weak since the decentralized technology of the blockchain. Therefore, the history of attacks that used BDoS is not very successful.

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