Unlike volume-based DoS attacks, vulnerability-based or exploit-based DoS attacks are generally single requests that can result in a DoS condition. Vulnerability-based DoS attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the network and its systems. The following table describes some well-known examples of vulnerability-based DoS.
Attack name | Description |
|---|---|
TearDrop attack | This involves fragmented ICMP packets with overlaps among the fragments. Such fragments cause certain implementations of the IP stack to crash or go into an infinite loop, thus leading to a DoS condition. |
Ping of Death attack | This involves sending packets that exceed the maximum authorized size (65,536 bytes) to a system with a vulnerable TCP/IP stack, causing it to crash. |
Land attack | This involves using IP-address spoofing with the same IP address and port number in the source and destination fields, causing vulnerable systems to become unstable. |