Overview

What Are DDoS Attacks

DoS (Denial of Service) attacks are also called flood attacks. They are intended to exhaust the network or system resources on the target computer, causing service interruption or suspension. Consequently, legitimate users fail to access network services. A DDoS attack involves multiple compromised computers controlled by an attacker flooding the targeted server with superfluous requests.

What Are UDP-based Amplification Attacks

UDP-based amplification attacks are a form of DDoS attacks that are highly destructive, easy to trigger, and difficult to trace.

Figure 1 shows how such an attack works. An UDP-based amplification attack does not directly work on the target server. Instead, the attacker sends special UDP-based request packets to some open internet servers via IP addresses forged as that of the target server. These request packets will bring out high volumes of data to overwhelm the target server.

Figure 1 How a UDP-based amplification attack works