Taxonomy of DoS attacks and their countermeasures

Abstract

DoS attacks can vary in type, depending on many different criteria, as well as their countermeasures. Detailed taxonomy can help distinguish all possible types and be used for better understanding of the situation. This study reviews existing DoS attack and DoS attack countermeasure classifications and offers new classification schemes. The proposed DoS attack taxonomy has a new attack characteristic, which describes how bug exploitation can be used for DoS attack execution, as well as new possible values for resource depletion attack and the ways of agent army formation. We also clarify methods for DoS effect achievement and position them in the DoS taxonomy hierarchy. While for DoS attack countermeasure taxonomy we combine ideas from existing taxonomies and compose a three criteria hierarchy with average detailing level. All criteria and categories are described, and seven DoS attack and seven DoS attack countermeasure taxonomies are analysed to obtain their characteristics. Some research is also done to show their application capabilities.