How does denial of service attacks have impact in society?

Answer 1

DOS attacks How do the work?

TCP/ip Transport control protocol/internet protocol packets by default make 9 attempts to connect using a SYN packet to a host prior to sending a FIN packet which terminates the connection. Each attempt has a random and static amount of delay added.

A host will allow for an amount of time for each SYN packet from the client to be ACK(nowleged) before continuing with the connection.

Therefore a program which is designed to send SYN packets asking for a connections but never ACK(nowleges) them will use up a connection on the target machine. The default for a HTTP: server is 256 simultaneous users to be connected. Therefore a single machine can use all 256 connection sockets and prevent any legitamate users from connecting. Effectively blocking the server from use. Because of the way TCP/iP works this attack is very difficult to prevent.

How do they affect Society?

Denial of service attacks are used as political statements, vandalism and even industral espionage. It's affect can vary from the mild annoyance of not being able to access a website, to potentially dangerous situations where critical services that use the internet, such as power stations or emergency services can lead to situations that may endanger life and limb.

On many occasions political statements have been made by so called "hacktivism". This takes the form of a website which promotes ideas which the self appointed "hacktivists" take offense, to is swamped with connection requests until the server is brought down or taken offline.

If we think about this action carefully, it is actually contrary to the concept of free speech as the "hactivists" have no right to tell the public what they should, and shouldn't read. The ultimate result of their ideals would end up being a totalitarian state if it were allowed to be continued.

Therefore this type of action is illegal in most countries. The problem is that the Internet is effectively an international communications country or state. For these rules to be effective every sovereign member state of the internet would have to agree to a unified set of rules.