Denial of Service and its effects on you

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks have the potential to affect any user on the Internet. As its name implies a denial of service attack denies access to a service. This can be done a number of ways ranging from exploiting weaknesses in specific applications to more commonly chewing up the bandwidth so that no one else can use it.

These attacks are generally used by activists with the intention of disrupting some form of communication for someone that does not share the same opinions of them such as when terrorists target government websites. This becomes an issue for a large number of users when critical internet services such as DNS are targeted. A large number of attacks are aimed at these types of services, and while preventative measures are in place it is only a matter of time before something fails.

DoS attacks are also often used to mask other attacks allowing hackers to gain access to systems while it only looks like a service is being attacked. These attacks often lead to information such as passwords or credit card numbers being leaked and able to be exploited elsewhere.

Unfortunately there is nothing a user of these services can do. The only advice is to try and use reputable services which are less likely to be impacted but inevitably it will happen.