The Difference between DOS and DDOS attack

There are many vulnerabilities that occur in websites, which are most likely used to disrupt someone's online services. DoS and DDoS are common attacks that make site owners suffer a lot. To protect websites and online businesses from these attackers, we need to know several types of attacks including DOS and DDOS, but do you know the difference between dos and DDoS attacks?

DoS Attack

A DoS attack is a denial of service attack that makes an attempt to make a server or network resource unavailable to its users and visitors. To be more specific, this attack uses one computer and one Internet connection to send massive requests to the server at a time, interrupting or suspending host services connected to the Internet temporarily or indefinitely. If a web host's server is subjected to a serious DoS attack, all the websites hosted on that server will most likely be inaccessible.

DoS attacks are quite complex and not easy to detect, they can even occur by exploiting application vulnerabilities. The targets of this kind of attack can be computers, target system ports, network connections, and even some resources such as disk space and bandwidth.

In addition, attackers can use this attack to run malware, cause errors, and even destroy the OS. Usually, most of these attacks are launched by those who are dissatisfied with the service, cybercriminals, and competitors.

DDoS Attack

A DDoS attack is a distributed denial-of-service attack that uses more than one computer and IP address distributed around the world to place a heavy load on services. The source of these attacks is often infected with a virus that makes the server or service malfunction.

Below we list 3 types of DDoS attacks that are commonly used:

1. UDP flood attacks. The attacker sends a large number of UDP packets to attack a random port on the target, making the host find no application listening on that port and replying with an unreachable destination ICMP packet.
2. SYN flood attacks. This is also called a TCP three-way handshake in which the attacker sends multiple SYN requests to the target system. It works by not responding to the server with the expected ACK code, causing the server to send an SYN-ACK to the wrong IP address.
3. Slowloris. This tool keeps the massive connection to the target server open for a very long time, and sends HTTP headers but doesn't resolve requests continuously, crashing the website.

Difference between DOS and DDOS

The first difference between DOS and DDOS attacks is that the attacker uses only one computer and one Internet connection when launching a DoS attack, whereas the attacker uses a widespread network of computers and multiple Internet connections in a DDoS attack. Another difference is that DoS attacks are much easier to operate and cost less.

In addition, it is more difficult to withstand a DDoS attack because there are multiple sources sending requests to overwhelm the target system. In this case, blocking the source is almost impossible.

However, in a DoS attack, if the incoming traffic is recognized as an abnormal traffic spike, the host can take immediate action to block the source. This means that DoS attacks can be blocked in a relatively short time.

Conclusion

DoS and DDoS are security issues that must be taken seriously, as they can destroy entire servers if not handled in a timely and proper manner. Therefore, when you choose a web host, you need to consider DDoS protection.

Today there are many web hosts on the market who are constantly striving to provide a robust hosting solution to meet your needs and improve the performance of your website. You can rest assured that all of our services have a DDoS Attack Response, helping you to get rid of annoying attacks.

Hopefully, this article about the Difference between DOS and DDOS attack gives you a little insight. Also, read an article about Difference between Front-End and Back-End Developer that you may need to know. Thank you.