Browse Books

Reviewer: L. F. Pau

This volume primarily addresses the framework for considering distributed denial of service attacks. After a first chapter highlighting the context and impact of denial of service attacks, a nontechnical chapter 2 explains the phenomenon, and illustrates the scope and seriousness of the problem. It touches on recruiting and controlling attacking machines, hiding, misusing legitimate services, and distribution effects. Chapter 3 is about the history of these attacks from Internet service operations, and the Internet design and management weaknesses that have been targeted. Chapter 4 provides a very elementary survey of how attacks are waged. The main mechanisms presented are: finding vulnerable machines, the use of worms, break-ins, propagation, and controlling distributed denial of service attack agents. Much less attention is given to attacks on a resource, flooding, denial of service attack toolkits, and Internet provider (IP) spoofing, which are very common. Chapter 5 is a nontechnical overview of denial of service attack defenses. The more technical elements of these defenses are described in chapter 6; this chapter is written as a process checklist of items to be considered, such as understanding your network, securing end hosts, tuning parameters, and handling attack traffic. Chapter 7 offers some research directions, many of which correspond to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) supported academic research efforts. Chapter 8 summarizes mostly US laws that may apply to denial of service attacks, and some best practices about how to handle these via legal proceedings, including damage assessment. The conclusion, in chapter 9, is a forecast into the future of denial of service attack handling, listing a number of resources (competence centers, Web sites, mailing lists, conferences, and journals) in the area. Three appendices contain a glossary, a survey of commercial defense approaches, and some denial of service attack observation data. There are also extensive lists of references, and an index. This book may give systems administrators and chief information officers (CIOs) a feeling for the underlying principles, risks, and processes, but it does not contain information on essential router characteristics, network management, operating systems, or network protocols-all facets that need to be analyzed and utilized for denial of service attacks, and above all, for defense. The book does not precisely explain how search and configuration methods and tools, along with information compartmentalization and encryption, can help. With respect to damage assessment, only direct costs are identified; indirect losses and the investments needed for defense are not covered. Online Computing Reviews Service

Reviewer: Ruay-Shiung Chang

If you were to rush to a bank to complete a transaction that was just barely overdue, you could imagine the uneasiness you would feel if the bank was out of service. Similarly, when a service Web site is unavailable just when you need it badly, you feel very upset. In the Internet age, when everything has gone online, disrupted services resulting from being unable to access a Web site are beginning to matter a great deal. Denial of service (DoS) and distributed DoS (DDoS) have become the number one killer for Internet businesses. This book outlines all you need to know about DoS and DDoS. The narratives are nontechnical and easy to understand, even for a layman. After reading this book, you will have a firm knowledge of DoS and DDoS. There are nine chapters and three appendices in the book. It begins with an introduction, including the definition of, and the history of, DoS and DDoS. Attacks and defenses strategies are then explained in detail. Since we can never eliminate DoS and DDoS completely, an effective defense mechanism is very important; the authors use three chapters and one appendix to familiarize their readers with various defense approaches and details. Finally, a chapter on legal issues is included, to help readers understand how the law and the legal system can (and cannot) help them. Further resources are provided in the conclusion. Although the authors are correct in keeping the technical details out of this book, they cannot totally avoid Unix scripts and Internet jargon, which is scattered throughout the book. Perhaps an independent chapter or appendix about Unix and Internet protocol suites would be appropriate in a future edition. An overview of the big picture of Internet security problems would also help readers understand the depth of DoS and DDoS as they are related to other security threats. Online Computing Reviews Service