Question

1. Discuss in-depth a Denial of Service (DOS) attack including the recent attacks on Miami-Dade Schools and the presidential election in 2020. Please include in your discussion how a DOS cyber attack is done, motivations for doing so, and how companies can protect themselves including accounting systems. Please do not include a definition of what a DOS attack is.

Answer 1

DOS attack on Miami-Dade Schools

DOS attack done by - 16 years old male from south miami

Method used - Low Orbit Ion Cannon (Disrupts Websites)

Damage Caused - Causing the system crash during first three days of school year

How a DOS cyber attack is done -

"They generally accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic or sending information that activate a crash"

In both the types above they disposes the legitimate users of service i.e the employees of organisation or members or any account holders etc';

They often target the high profile organisations such as banks,commerce,government organisations etc;

They do not typically lead to loss of information or as such but it can cost us in time and money to handle

The signs of DoS attacks :

• The website is responding slowly.
• The website is unresponsive.
• The user has problems accessing the website.
• Internet connection issues if you are a target.

There are two general methods of DoS attacks: flooding services or crashing services. Flood attacks occur when the system receives too much traffic for the server to buffer, causing them to slow down and eventually stop. Popular flood attacks include:

Buffer overflow attacks – the most common DoS attack. The concept is to send more traffic to a network address than the programmers have built the system to handle. It includes the attacks listed below, in addition to others that are designed to exploit bugs specific to certain applications or networks

ICMP flood – leverages misconfigured network devices by sending spoofed packets that ping every computer on the targeted network, instead of just one specific machine. The network is then triggered to amplify the traffic. This attack is also known as the smurf attack or ping of death.

SYN flood – sends a request to connect to a server, but never completes the handshake. Continues until all open ports are saturated with requests and none are available for legitimate users to connect to

Motivation Behind DDoS Attacks?

Hacktivism - occurs when hackers want to deploy an attack in order to spread a message.

Targeted attacks - Can be used to damage a website’s reputation or to cause pain for a marketing team.

Pure Boredom - Idea of people attacking a website out of sheer boredom and amusement.

How companies can protect themselves including "Accounting Systems" ?

1. Activate a Website Application Firewall Protection From DDoS Attacks

Trusted Zone Server Server I Server Firewall Server 0 Network Firewall Website Firewall LL External Zone

2. Country blocking

General Health Check Access Control Security HTTPS/SSL Performance DNS API Whitelist IP Addresses Geo Blocking Save Blacklist IP Addresses Whitelist URL Paths This option allows you to block access to your site from the countries selected. The viewing list is used to prevent anyone from that country from visiting (browsing) the site, while the other option, posting, allows them to view the content in read-only mode, but they won't be able to login, register, buy or send any comments. Blacklist URL Paths Block User-Agents View Post Country 252 Countries Block HTTP Cookies Block HTTP Referers Afghanistan 0 Protected Pages Aland Islands Geo Blocking # Albania o Algeria American Samoa 0 Tel Andorra Angola o Anguilla 0 Anonymous Proxies 0 0 Antarctica

3. mONITOR tRAFFIC

4. Block Application Layer DDoS Attacks