Ten DOS Attacks and Free DOS Attacking Tools

Some of  these tools are dated but will still work. Please read the notes prior to usage and always use in a lab environment or permission of system/network/server proprietors.

1. LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Canon) - LOIC is one of the most popular DOS attacking tools freely available on the Internet. This tool was used by the popular hackers group Anonymous against many big companies’ networks last year. Anonymous has not only used the tool, but also requested Internet users to join their DDOS attack via IRC.

It can be used simply by a single user to perform a DOS attack on small servers. This tool is really easy to use, even for a beginner. This tool performs a DOS attack by sending UDP, TCP, or HTTP requests to the victim server. You only need to know the URL of IP address of the server and the tool will do the rest.

You can see the snapshot of the tool above. Enter the URL or IP address and then select the attack parameters. If you are not sure, you can leave the defaults. When you are done with everything, click on the big button saying “IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER” and it will start attacking on the target server. In a few seconds, you will see that the website has stopped responding to your requests.

This tool also has a HIVEMIND mode. It lets attacker control remote LOIC systems to perform a DDOS attack. This feature is used to control all other computers in your zombie network. This tool can be used for both DOS attacks and DDOS attacks against any website or server.

The most important thing you should know is that LOIC does nothing to hide your IP address. If you are planning to use LOIC to perform a DOS attack, think again. Using a proxy will not help you because it will hit the proxy server not the target server. So using this tool against a server can create a trouble for you.

Download LOIC Here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/

2. XOIC - performs a DOS attack on any server with an IP address, a user-selected port, and a user-selected protocol. Developers of XOIC claim that XOIC is more powerful than LOIC in many ways. Like LOIC, it comes with an easy-to-use GUI, so a beginner can easily use this tool to perform attacks on other websites or servers.

3. HULK (HTTP Unbearable Load King) - generates a unique request for each and every generated request to obfuscated traffic at a web server. This tool uses many other techniques to avoid attack detection via known patterns.
It has a list of known user agents to use randomly with requests. It also uses referrer forgery and it can bypass caching engines, thus it directly hits the server’s resource pool.

The developer of the tool tested it on an IIS 7 web server with 4 GB RAM. This tool brought the server down in under one minute.

Download HULK here: http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/112856/HULK-Http-Unbearable-Load-King.html

4. DDOSIM—Layer 7 DDOS Simulator - used to perform DDOS attacks by simulating several zombie hosts. All zombie hosts create full TCP connections to the target server. This tool is written in C++ and runs on Linux systems.

These are main features of DDOSIM

• Simulates several zombies in attack
• Random IP addresses
• TCP-connection-based attacks
• Application-layer DDOS attacks
• HTTP DDoS with valid requests
• HTTP DDoS with invalid requests (similar to a DC++ attack)
• SMTP DDoS
• TCP connection flood on random port

Download DDOSIM here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddosim/

Read more about this tool here: http://stormsecurity.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/application-layer-ddos-simulator/

5. R-U-Dead-Yet - also known as RUDY. It performs a DOS attack with a long form field submission via the POST method. This tool comes with an interactive console menu. It detects forms on a given URL and lets users select which forms and fields should be used for a POST-based DOS attack.Download RUDY: https://code.google.com/p/r-u-dead-yet/

6. Tor’s Hammer - It is a slow post tool written in Python. This tool has an extra advantage: It can be run through a TOR network to be anonymous while performing the attack. It is an effective tool that can kill Apache or IIS servers in few seconds.Download TOR’s Hammer here: http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/98831/

7. PyLoris - PyLoris is said to be a testing tool for servers. It can be used to perform DOS attacks on a service. This tool can utilize SOCKS proxies and SSL connections to perform a DOS attack on a server. It can target various protocols, including HTTP, FTP, SMTP, IMAP, and Telnet. The latest version of the tool comes with a simple and easy-to-use GUI. Unlike other traditional DOS attacking tools, this tool directly hits the service.Download PyLoris: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyloris/

8. OWASP DOS HTTP POST - You can use this tool to check whether your web server is able to defend DOS attack or not. Not only for defense, it can also be used to perform DOS attacks against a website.Download here: https://code.google.com/p/owasp-dos-http-post/

9. DAVOSET - The latest version of the tool has added support for cookies along with many other features. You can download DAVOSET for free from Packetstormsecurity.
Download DavoSET: http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/123084/DAVOSET-1.1.3.html

10. GoldenEye HTTP Denial Of Service Tool - tools that can put heavy load on HTTP servers in order to bring them to their knees by exhausting resource pools.

Download GoldenEye: http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/120966/GoldenEye-HTTP-Denial-Of-Service-Tool.html