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Abstract:
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In this paper, we seek to answer a simple question: "How prevalent are denial-of-service attacks in
the Internet today?". Our motivation is to understand quantitatively the nature of the current threat a
s well as to enable longer-term analyses of trends and recurring patterns of attacks. We present a new t
echnique, called "backscatter analysis", that provides an estimate of worldwide denial-of-service activit
y. We use this approach on three week-long datasets to assess the number, duration and focus of attacks,
and to characterize their behavior. During this period, we observe more than 12,000 attacks against mor
e than 5,000 distinct targets, ranging from well known e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Hotmail to
small foreign ISPs and dial-up connections. We believe that our work is the only publically available d
ata quantifying denial-of-service activity in the Internet.
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