Is your network getting phlooded

What’s it with all these companies that coin new terms to describe Network security problems. One thing that goes unnoticed is that most of them have a fixation for the sound "Ph" to name their newly coined terms.

Phlooding is described as a group of simultaneous but geographically distributed attacks that targets a business's authentication or login in a wireless network with the goal of overloading its central authentication server. These sorts of attacks are aimed at organizations, which operate from multiple locations but are largely dependant on a single server.

When many such multiple logins are attempted simultaneously, it could cause a Flood of login requests severely slowing down of an otherwise fast server. It may also result in blocking Email or Database access, which means it, may end up in a denial of service sort of a situation.
A Company called AirMagnet are introducing wireless intrusion prevention system that includes wireless event correlation and detection methods designed to identify clusters of attacks that indicate phlooding and similar exploit.

So what’s the difference between phishing, pharming and phlooding?

Phishing is the luring of an internet user to reveal personal details (like passwords and credit card information) on a fake web page or email form pretending to come from a legitimate company like a bank.

Pharming on the other hand refers to a set of devious techniques to misdirect your Internet browser, tricking it into accessing a malicious web site that looks like and pretends to be a legitimate site, usually to trick you into entering personal information. Here it directs you to another site not by web address manipulation but by the attacker manipulating it at the DNS level.Phlooding however is largely brought upon by negligent or improper use of a wireless network and it can be avoided by ensuring a proper firewall is in place and systems are configured correctly. Leaving Windows PCs in ad-hoc networking mode is another contributory factor that perpetuates phlooding.

So the next time you get attacked I suggest you say OOOOPH !