Denial Of Service Attack And Why It Matters To Understand Blockchain Business Models

A denial of service (DoS) attack is a deliberate action by a malicious actor to disrupt access to websites, email, accounts, devices, or other network resources. Distributed denial of service attacks is a more evolved and complex form of DoS attack. Distributed denial of service attacks is a more evolved and complex form of DoS attack. A key difference between the two is that a DDoS attack sends illegitimate requests to a system from multiple sources. This makes it extremely difficult for the victim to first detect and then stop.

Understanding a denial of service attack

The first denial of service attack was created by David Dennis in 1974 who wrote a program to force university library computers to power down.

In the modern era, DoS attacks describe any deliberate action to deprive legitimate users of services or resources they expect to be able to access. High-profile organizations are often the victims of such attacks, including those in banking, commerce, and media. Trade and governmental organizations are also frequently targeted.

Although DoS attacks do not typically result in the theft of information or other significant assets, rectifying an outage is often time and resource-intensive. 

The two main types of denial of service attacks

Flooding services

The most common DoS attack occurs when a malicious party floods a network server with traffic. Illegitimate service requests with fake return addresses are sent to the target server, overloading it with traffic. 

As the server attempts to process these fabricated requests, the server becomes overwhelmed and legitimate users cannot access it.

Flood attacks include:

  • Buffer overflow attacks โ€“ one of the more common DoS attacks where more traffic is sent to a network address than it was designed to handle. It encompasses the two attacks listed below and is also used to exploit bugs specific to particular networks or applications.
  • ICMP flood โ€“ in this case, spoofed packets are sent to ping every computer on a misconfigured network. By attacking more than one machine, the effect is amplified by the network. An ICMP flood is commonly called a smurf attack or ping of death.
  • SYN flood โ€“ here, requests are sent to connect to a server without completing a three-way handshake. This attack continues until all open ports are saturated with requests, leaving them in an occupied status. As requests are constantly sent, there are no open ports for legitimate users to connect to.

Crash attacks

Crash attacks occur less frequently than flooding attacks. Put simply, a crash attack describes the malicious actor transmitting a bug that exploits flaws in a system and causes it to crash.

This leaves legitimate users unable to access important services.

Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS)

Distributed denial of service attacks are a more evolved and complex form of DoS attack.

A key difference between the two is that a DDoS attack sends illegitimate requests to a system from multiple sources. This makes it extremely difficult for the victim to first detect and then stop.

A DDoS attack is carried out by a network of hacked computers (called zombie computers or bots) which collectively form a network of bots or a botnet. In some instances, networks are comprised of millions of computers.

The Amazon Web Services attack of 2020 is perhaps the most recent extreme example of a DDoS attack. Vulnerable third-party servers were hit for three straight days and peaked at an eye-watering 2.3 terabytes per second.

Key takeaways:

A denial of service attack is a deliberate action by a malicious actor to disrupt websites, email, accounts, devices, or other important network services.

A DoS attack may be performed by flooding and subsequently overwhelming a network server with traffic. A much less common method involves infecting systems with bugs to exploit flaws or vulnerabilities.

A distributed denial of service is a more complex and potent form of DoS attacks. It uses networks of infected computers to send vast amounts of information to the intended victim.

Related Blockchain Business Frameworks

Web3

web3
Web3 describes a version of the internet where data will be interconnected in a decentralized way. Web3 is an umbrella that comprises various fields like semantic web, AR/VR, AI at scale, blockchain technologies, and decentralization. The core idea of Web3 moves along the lines of enabling decentralized ownership on the web.

Blockchain Protocol

blockchain-protocol
A blockchain protocol is a set of underlying rules that define how a blockchain will work. Based on the underlying rules of the protocol it’s possible to build a business ecosystem. Usually, protocol’s rules comprise everything from how tokens can be issued, how value is created, and how interactions happen on top of the protocol.

Hard Fork

hard-fork
In software engineering, a fork consists of a “split” of a project, as developers take the source code to start independently developing on it. Software protocols (the set of rules underlying the software) usually fork as a group decision-making process. All developers have to agree on the new course and direction of the software protocol. A fork can be “soft” when an alteration to the software protocol keeps it backward compatible or “hard” where a divergence of the new chain is permanent. Forks are critical to the development and evolution of Blockchain protocols.

Merkle Tree

merkle-tree
A Merkle tree is a data structure encoding blockchain data more efficiently and securely. The Merkle tree is one of the foundational components of a Blockchain protocol.

Nothing-at-stake

nothing-at-stake-problem
The nothing-at-stake problem argues that validators on a blockchain with a financial incentive to mine on each fork are disruptive to consensus. Potentially, this makes the system more vulnerable to attack. This is a key problem that makes possible underlying blockchain protocols, based on core mechanisms like a proof-of-stake consensus, a key consensus system, that together the proof-of-work make up key protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

51% Attack

51%-attack
A 51% Attack is an attack on the blockchain network by an entity or organization. The primary goal of such an attack is the exclusion or modification of blockchain transactions. A 51% attack is carried out by a miner or group of miners endeavoring to control more than half of a network’s mining power, hash rate, or computing power. For this reason, it is sometimes called a majority attack. This can corrupt a blockchain protocol that malicious attackers would take over.

Proof of Work

proof-of-work
A Proof of Work is a form of consensus algorithm used to achieve agreement across a distributed network. In a Proof of Work, miners compete to complete transactions on the network, by commuting hard mathematical problems (i.e. hashes functions) and as a result they get rewarded in coins.

Application Binary Interface

application-binary-interface
An Application Binary Interface (ABI) is the interface between two binary program modules that work together. An ABI is a contract between pieces of binary code defining the mechanisms by which functions are invoked and how parameters are passed between the caller and callee. ABIs have become critical in the development of applications leveraging smart contracts, on Blockchain protocols like Ethereum.

Proof of Stake

proof-of-stake
A Proof of Stake (PoS) is a form of consensus algorithm used to achieve agreement across a distributed network. As such it is, together with Proof of Work, among the key consensus algorithms for Blockchain protocols (like the Ethereum’s Casper protocol). Proof of Stake has the advantage of security, reduced risk of centralization, and energy efficiency.

Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake

proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake

Proof of Activity

proof-of-activity
Proof-of-Activity (PoA) is a blockchain consensus algorithm that facilitates genuine transactions and consensus amongst miners. That is a consensus algorithm combining proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. This consensus algorithm is designed to prevent attacks on the underlying Blockchain.

Blockchain Economics

blockchain-economics
According to Joel Monegro, a former analyst at USV (a venture capital firm) the blockchain implies value creation in its protocols. Where the web has allowed the value to be captured at the applications layer (take Facebook, Twitter, Google, and many others). In a Blockchain Economy, this value might be captured by the protocols at the base of the blockchain (for instance Bitcoin and Ethereum).

Blockchain Business Model Framework

blockchain-business-models
A Blockchain Business Model is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Value and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.

Sharding

sharding
Blockchain companies use sharding to partition databases and increase scalability, allowing them to process more transactions per second. Sharding is a key mechanism underneath the Ethereum Blockchain and one of its critical components. Indeed, sharding enables Blockchain protocols to overcome the Scalability Trilemma (as a Blockchain grows, it stays scalable, secure, and decentralized).

DAO

decentralized-autonomous-organization
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) operates autonomously on blockchain protocol under rules governed by smart contracts. DAO is among the most important innovations that Blockchain has brought to the business world, which can create “super entities” or large entities that do not have a central authority but are instead managed in a decentralized manner.

Smart Contracts

smart-contracts
Smart contracts are protocols designed to facilitate, verify, or enforce digital contracts without the need for a credible third party. These contracts work on an “if/when-then” principle and have some similarities to modern escrow services but without a third party involved in guaranteeing the transaction. Instead, it uses blockchain technology to verify the information and increase trust between the transaction participants.

Non-Fungible Tokens

non-fungible-tokens
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are cryptographic tokens that represent something unique. Non-fungible assets are those that are not mutually interchangeable. Non-fungible tokens contain identifying information that makes them unique. Unlike Bitcoin โ€“ which has a supply of 21 million identical coins โ€“ they cannot be exchanged like for like.

Decentralized Finance

decentralized-finance-defi
Decentralized finance (DeFi) refers to an ecosystem of financial products that do not rely on traditional financial intermediaries such as banks and exchanges. Central to the success of decentralized finance is smart contracts, which are deployed on Ethereum (contracts that two parties can deploy without an intermediary). DeFi also gave rise to dApps (decentralized apps), giving developers the ability to build applications on top of the Ethereum blockchain.

History of Bitcoin

history-of-bitcoin
The history of Bitcoin starts before the 2008 White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. In 1989 first and 1991, David Chaum created DigiCash, and various cryptographers tried to solve the “double spending” problem. By 1998 Nick Szabo began working on a decentralized digital currency called โ€œbit gold.โ€ By 2008 the Bitcoin White Paper got published. And from there, by 2014, the Blockchain 2.0 (beyond the money use case) sprouted out.

Altcoins

altcoin
An altcoin is a general term describing any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Indeed, as Bitcoin started to evolve since its inception, back in 2009, many other cryptocurrencies sprouted due to philosophical differences with the Bitcoin protocol but also to cover wider use cases that the Bitcoin protocol could enable.

Ethereum

ethereum-blockchain
Ethereum was launched in 2015 with its cryptocurrency, Ether, as an open-source, blockchain-based, decentralized platform software. Smart contracts are enabled, and Distributed Applications (dApps) get built without downtime or third-party disturbance. It also helps developers build and publish applications as it is also a programming language running on a blockchain.

Ethereum Flywheel

blockchain-flywheel
An imaginary flywheel of the development of a crypto ecosystem, and more, in particular, the Ethereum ecosystem. As developers join in and the community strengthens, more use cases are built, which attract more and more users. As users grow exponentially, businesses become interested in the underlying ecosystem, thus investing more in it. These resources are invested back in the protocol to make it more scalable, thus reducing gas fees for developers and users, facilitating the adoption of the whole business platform.

Solana

solana-blockchain
Solana is a blockchain network with a focus on high performance and rapid transactions. To boost speed, it employs a one-of-a-kind approach to transaction sequencing. Users can use SOL, the network’s native cryptocurrency, to cover transaction costs and engage with smart contracts.

Polkadot

polkadot-token
In essence, Polkadot is a cryptocurrency project created as an effort to transform and power a decentralized internet, Web 3.0, in the future. Polkadot is a decentralized platform, which makes it interoperable with other blockchains.

Filecoin

filecoin
Launched in October 2020, Filecoin protocol is based on a โ€œuseful workโ€ consensus, where the miners are rewarded as they perform useful work for the network (provide storage and retrieve data). Filecoin (โจŽ) is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system. Built on the InterPlanetary File System.

Brave

bat-token
BAT or Basic Attention Token is a utility token aiming to provide privacy-based web tools for advertisers and users to monetize attention on the web in a decentralized way via Blockchain-based technologies. Therefore, the BAT ecosystem moves around a browser (Brave), a privacy-based search engine (Brave Search), and a utility token (BAT). Users can opt-in to advertising, thus making money based on their attention to ads as they browse the web.

Decentralized Exchange

decentralized-exchange-platforms
Uniswap is a renowned decentralized crypto exchange created in 2018 and based on the Ethereum blockchain, to provide liquidity to the system. As a cryptocurrency exchange technology that operates on a decentralized basis. The Uniswap protocol inherited its namesake from the business that created it โ€” Uniswap. Through smart contracts, the Uniswap protocol automates transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Read Next: Proof-of-stakeProof-of-workBitcoinEthereumBlockchain.

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