Application-layer denial of service attacks: taxonomy and survey

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.