Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 25

How can a web site distinguish between lack of capacity and a denial-of-service attack? For example, web sites often experience a tremendous increase in volume of traffic right after an advertisement with the site’s URL is shown on television during the broadcast of a popular sporting event. That spike in usage is the result of normal access that happens to occur at the same time. How can a site determine that high traffic is reasonable?