Denial-Of-Service Attacks: Threats to E-Commerce Security

The types of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks that knocked several big e-commerce Web sites out of action earlier this year remain a viable threat that could grow even more sophisticated, according to experts at this week's government-sponsored National Information Systems . . . The types of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks that knocked several big e-commerce Web sites out of action earlier this year remain a viable threat that could grow even more sophisticated, according to experts at this week's government-sponsored National Information Systems Security Conference here.

In a DDOS attack, an intruder breaks into a system and turns it into a "zombie," then uses that machine to target Web servers run by other companies. There are now indications that worm programs are being used to automatically propagate large numbers of zombies, Longstaff warned. A DDOS attack utilizing a worm will spread "much more quickly, and it is much more difficult to trace back to the intruder," he said.

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