CoAP DDoS attacks have already been detected in the wild, some clocking at 320Gbps
RFC 7252, also known as the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), is about to become one of the most abused protocols in terms of DDoS attacks, security researchers have told ZDNet.
If readers don't recognize the name of this protocol that's because it's new --being formally approved only recently, in 2014, and largely unused until this year.
What is CoAP?
CoAP was designed as a lightweight machine-to-machine (M2M) protocol that can run on smart devices where memory and computing resources are scarce.
In a very simplistic explanation, CoAP is very similar to HTTP, but instead of working on top of TCP packets, it works on top of UDP, a lighter data transfer format created as a TCP alternative.
Just like HTTP is used to transport data and commands (GET, POST, CONNECT, etc.) between a client and a server, CoAP also allows the same multicast and command transmission features, but without needing the same amount of resources, making it ideal for today's rising wave of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
