Denial-of-Service attacks aim to disrupt services by overwhelming a system’s resources—and understanding how they work is key to protecting against them. This episode covers the types of DoS attacks, including protocol, volumetric, and application-layer variants. We then examine how Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks scale the damage by launching traffic from multiple compromised systems, often part of a botnet.

You’ll also learn about common symptoms, such as service unavailability, bandwidth saturation, and abnormal traffic patterns. We discuss mitigation strategies such as rate limiting, geo-blocking, traffic scrubbing, and use of third-party DDoS protection services. These attacks are common and often high-profile, so knowing how to defend against them is critical for maintaining availability and earning your Network Plus certification.