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Can someone explain or direct me to an explaination of what a DOS or DDOS attack consist of?
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A denial-of-service (DOS) attack is when an attacker floods a server with IP packets such as ping or SYN requests. The purpose is to overwhelm either the server's CPU or it's internet connection so it can't respond to legit users.
A distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) is when an attacker uses many computers (sometimes thousands) to launch their DOS attack. They compromise computers by taking advantage of unpatched OS bugs and/or weak user passwords and gain remote control of the machines. Then they use the compromised machines to launch DDOS attacks from all over the world.
Unfortunately, denial-of-service attacks are very effective unless you've got a whole bunch of money to spend to fend them off. DOS attacks often come with an e-mail telling you where to send $$$ in order to get the attack stopped.
Here's a pretty good Wiki article with more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack