Launching distributed denial of service attacks by network protocol exploitation

The article aims to provide a concise introduction to the network protocols and methods of their exploitation. This may lead to instigating DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks which focus on flooding and saturating elements of victim's physical network infrastructure. In the first part layers of the RFC (Request for Comments) and the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) models are delimited along with their differences and protocols associated. The HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) standard is treated preferentially as it forms communication framework of the Internet. The second part focuses on the most prolific type of network incursion currently in use, DDoS, its structure and a freely available tool LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) utilized to launch it. The third part evaluates specific forms of DDoS, including known measures to counter them. The conclusion summarizes the text and briefly hypothesizes about the future in the field