An overview of DDoS attacks based on DNS

Botnet-based Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are considered as the main concerns and problems of today's Internet. The damage of these attacks are very serious since the number of computers involved in these attacks is huge and distributed worldwide. However, many protocols such as Domain Name System (DNS) have several security vulnerabilities nowadays that are utilized by botnet attackers. The amplification attacks are the most popular attacks in the Internet which require robust hardware and software for security assurance. In this paper, we provide an overview of botnet-based DDoS attacks that use DNS as a basic infrastructure to launch attacks. We aim to make a better understanding of the most noted attacks to extend the knowledge about DDoS attacks and to analyze the importance of DNS services.