DOS attacks?

[hobo_man]

I have a few questions...
1) Is getting DOS attacked normal?
2) What is DOS? ( I know it stands for Denial of Service, but what does it mean?)
3) What happens if he/she/they manage to hack my computer using DOS?
I'm just wondering...Someone or some people have tried to hack me using DOS 7 times already. Good thing I have a firewall...

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

DOS stands for Denial of Service attack. Yes it's pretty normal to get DOS'ed as it's the simpliest of attacks.

If you seach wikipedia for infomation on DOS attacks you should get alot of info.

 

[fitzjj]

Yes it's pretty normal to get DOS'ed as it's the simpliest of attacks

I wouldn't say getting DOS'ed was normal! ok some forms of DOS attack are pretty easy to launch but unless you have a large online presence no one is going to bother DOS'ing you. A firewall will block many forms of DOS attack, although you may have to go higher up the chain (i.e. your ISP) to block some forms of attack that rely on bandwidth consumption.

DOS is not used as a method of gaining access to resources such as your computer, it is a method of denying access to legitimate users, e.g. using all of the resources of webserver so that legitimate users cannot connect - a serious problem for online businesses, or crashing a system - possibly through using known vulnerabilities, for example ping of death.

There is no single DOS attack it is just a term given to any attack that causes a service to be denied. With computers and networks getting increasingly secure a lot of the earlier DOS attacks have been eliminated hence why more recent attacks focus on capacity depletion, since everything has a finite capacity especially when it comes to bandwidth.