On Distributed Denial of Service Current Defense Schemes

Abstract

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are a major threat to any network-based service provider. The ability of an attacker to harness the power of a lot of compromised devices to launch an attack makes it even more complex to handle. This complexity can increase even more when several attackers coordinate to launch an attack on one victim. Moreover, attackers these days do not need to be highly skilled to perpetrate an attack. Tools for orchestrating an attack can easily be found online and require little to no knowledge about attack scripts to initiate an attack. Studies have been done severally to develop defense mechanisms to detect and defend against DDoS attacks. As defense schemes are designed and developed, attackers are also on the move to evade these defense mechanisms and so there is a need for a continual study in developing defense mechanisms. This paper discusses the current DDoS defense mechanisms, their strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords

• distributed denial of service (DDoS)
• detection
• defense
• traceback
• attack