The 2006 Estonia attack is one classic example of a state actor using “influencers” to DoS Estonian interest.Ĭorporate Competition. But, the more frequent “state interest” DoS would be launched indirectly via influence campaigns or by terrorists. Planning for these Nation-State Internet conflicts would be part of a DoS Resiliency plan. Counties in conflict can and will use the Internet as part of their conflict. The Internet is an international battlespace. Nation-State threat actors launching DoS attacks are obvious but often overlooked. Nation-State Actors, State Controlled Influence Campaigns & Terrorist DoS. Today, a protest DoS can have a collateral impact on hospitals, voice connections, and other critical infrastructure. In the old days, all this meant was a slower Internet. The thing to remember with Protest DoS is that the collateral consequence can impact the Internet. Students all over China launching tools to DoS the Japanese State Education board over the “new official history” is a protest DoS. People banning together to DoS all the whaling operations is an example of DoS Protesting. The second most common DoS attacks are launched by people who are protesting, linked to politics, or projecting a “principle” using DoS as a statement. Protesting, Politics, and Principled Passion DoS. The key with all these “DoS Flavors” is that there is some human motivation that society sees as illegal. These DoS attacks are the most common and range from someone getting paid to DoS a company during a major event to knocking out competitive gamers to being a “ransomware payment motivator to a “DDoS Extortion” to a distraction to another criminal penetration/data exfiltration. The reasons vary but can be classified into five motivations:Ĭriminal Intent DoS. People are behind all the intentional and unintentional DoS Attacks. What Causes DoD Attacks?ĭoS Attacks and “Distributed DoS” Attack (DDoS) are caused by humans. They will be with us for as long as we have a global interconnected network that interlinks people, machines, AIs, and things. Some have a perception that just because DoS Attacks are not in the news that they have “gone away.” The reality is that we will always have DoS Attacks. Some have a perception that DoS attacks are new. They happened on all the early, public networks (FidoNet, BBS networks, BITNET, etc) and were part of the “mainframe” timeshare culture (where people locked each other out of terminals to get more machine time). Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks, Incidents, and Events have been with the Internet community since the early days of the ARPANET.