• Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Summary

    • Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new way to detect denial-of-service attacks.
    • The new technique is more accurate than current methods, correctly identifying 99% of attacks in testing.
    • The technique works by tracking the evolution of entropy, a measure of disorder in a system.
    • During a denial-of-service attack, two measures of entropy go in opposite directions. At the target address, many more clicks than usual are going to one place, a state of low entropy. But the sources of those clicks, whether people, zombies or bots, originate in many different places—high entropy. The mismatch could signify an attack.
    • The new technique is automated and doesn’t require close oversight by a human to distinguish between legitimate traffic and an attack.
    • The researchers say that their program is “lightweight”—it doesn’t need much computing power or network resources to do its job.
    • The PNNL team is now looking at how the buildout of 5G networking and the booming internet of things landscape will have an impact on denial-of-service attacks.