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i hear people use dos and ddos almost interchangably and i know that dos stands for denial of service and that ddos stands for distributed denial of service, but whats the difference between the two? i know what they generally do, but the explanations for dos and ddos that i've found on google seem to be exactly the same. is a dos from one comp and a ddos from a bunch of zombie comps or something?
I may be completely wrong seeing as I'm a noob to this area, but I believe the simplest way to put it would be:
DOS: attack from 1 IP
DDOS: attack from multiple IPs (spoofed, multi-boxed, or w/e)
What Winds said is correct -
Dos == denial of service.
DDos == distributed denial of service.
DDos is the tougher attack to fend off, depending on the resources available to them and you.
And then regardles of which type of attack was used the descriptive is DOS ..ie " the website was off due to DOS attacks"
The concept has been a bit difficult for some people to grasp. DDoS is to DOS like a Middle Linebacker is to a Linebacker. Did that help? Probably not. Winds is right. DDoS simply means the Denial Of Service attack is using more than one source to impinge the target, thus *distributed*.
If 10 separate IP's are hammering your router with the ol' Ping Of Death, then you could say you are the victim of a Denial of Service attack and be correct; but, saying you are the victim of a *Distributed* Denial of Service attack would also be correct, as well as more accurate.
Also there can be quite a big difference in the application of the DoS. A DDoS and a DRDoS generally target the overloading of network services through various means. A DoS however can be succesfull with a very few number of packets sent if they manage to cause a service to crash.
I remember a problem in Win98 with pings of more than 64k that would cause a BSoD and a hang. You don't need any zombies for something like that.
Personally, I think that was worded perfectly.. noob to the area or not. This is the easiest, most basic, and accurate explanation of it. Good job! :)Quote:
I may be completely wrong seeing as I'm a noob to this area, but I believe the simplest way to put it would be:
DOS: attack from 1 IP
DDOS: attack from multiple IPs (spoofed, multi-boxed, or w/e)
one more type to confuse you, DRDOS
Distributed Reflected Denial of Serivce
an attack that is reflected off another computer system
(reflected to increase amount of bandwidth being sent at target)
DDOS via Smurfing. Smurfy!