Title: Application-layer denial of service attacks: taxonomy and survey

Authors: Georgios Mantas; Natalia Stakhanova; Hugo Gonzalez; Hossein Hadian Jazi; Ali A. Ghorbani

Addresses: Information Security Centre of Excellence, University of New Brunswick, 550 Windsor Street, ITC, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada ' Information Security Centre of Excellence, University of New Brunswick, 550 Windsor Street, ITC, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada ' Information Security Centre of Excellence, University of New Brunswick, 550 Windsor Street, ITC, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada ' Information Security Centre of Excellence, University of New Brunswick, 550 Windsor Street, ITC, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada ' Information Security Centre of Excellence, University of New Brunswick, 550 Windsor Street, ITC, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Abstract: The recent escalation of application-layer denial of service (DoS) attacks has attracted a significant interest of the security research community. Since application-layer DoS attacks usually do not manifest themselves at the network level, they avoid traditional network-layer-based detection. Therefore, the security community has focused on specialised application-layer DoS attacks detection and mitigation mechanisms. However, the deployment of reliable and efficient defence mechanisms against these attacks requires the comprehensive understanding of the existing application-layer DoS attacks supported by a unified terminology. Thus, in this paper we address this issue and devise a taxonomy of application-layer DoS attacks. By devising the proposed taxonomy, we intend to give researchers a better understanding of these attacks and provide a foundation for organising research efforts within this specific field.

Keywords: denial of service attacks; DoS attacks; application layer attacks; taxonomy; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2015.073028

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2015 Vol.7 No.2/3/4, pp.216 - 239

Received: 18 Nov 2014
Accepted: 06 Jul 2015

Published online: 12 Nov 2015 *

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