Next big threat could be denial-of-service attacks

Technology

Next big threat could be denial-of-service attacks

Government Computer News reports that the move toward cloud computing could dictate the type of the next big attacks.

Federal News Network Staff

January 20, 2011 2:10 pm

< a min read

The cloud may be the next big thing in computing. Now some info-security specialists are saying that means the next big thing in attacks could be a new generation of denial-of-service attacks.

A senior security researcher at Adobe Systems warned about them at the Black Hat Federal conference in Arlington. Bryan Sullivan says in Government Computer News that cybercrooks will use DOS attacks to use up resources and drive up the cost of cloud computing.

He described a new generation of attacks that will target specific lines of code in a specific application.

Although the impact is less widespread than a traditional DOS attack, Sullivan says it is highly targeted and highly effective. One single HTTP request of several hundred bytes could crash a server.

This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily Cybersecurity Update brought to you by Tripwire. For more cybersecurity news, click here.