Protection against denial of service attacks: A survey

Denial of service (DoS) is a prevalent threat in today's networks because DoS attacks are easy to launch, while defending a network resource against them is disproportionately difficult. Despite the extensive research in recent years, DoS attacks continue to harm, as the attackers adapt to the newer protection mechanisms. For this reason, we start our survey with a historical timeline of DoS incidents, where we illustrate the variety of types, targets and motives for such attacks and how they evolved during the last two decades. We then provide an extensive literature review on the existing research on DoS protection with an emphasis on the research of the last years and the most demanding aspects of defence. These include traceback, detection, classification of incoming traffic, response in the presence of an attack and mathematical modelling of attack and defence mechanisms. Our discussion aims to identify the trends in DoS attacks, the weaknesses of protection approaches and the qualities that modern ones should exhibit, so as to suggest new directions that DoS research can follow.