Chapter 3. Server-side Attacks

A server by definition is a dedicated computing system running services to users and other computers on a network. Examples of service range from public services such as online gaming to sharing sensitive files inside a large organization. In the context of client-server architecture, a servers is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, known as the "clients". Thus, the server performs some computational task on behalf of "clients". The clients either run on the same computer, or connect through the network. For example, a server would host a game to the world while clients would access the game remotely. There are various forms of providing services to clients such as an Apache Web Server limited to HTTP or a BEA WebLogic Application Server that does HTTP plus more.

Network servers are typically configured to handle the load of servicing large volumes of clients. This means adding additional processing, memory and storage making...