Resources are manipulated so as to make functions requiring
those resources operate differently than normal. Examples include e-mail
overflow used to disrupt system operation,
[Cohen93] file handle
consumption used to prevent audits from operating,
[Cohen91] and
overloading unobservable network paths to force communications to use
observable paths.
Complexity: Most of the issues with resource availability result from the
high cost of making worst-case resources available. As a result, a tradeoff
is made in the design of systems that assures that under some (hopefully
unlikely) conditions resources will be exhausted while providing a suitably
high likelihood of availability under almost all realistic situations. The
general complexity involved with most resource allocation problems in which
limited resources are available is at least NP-complete.
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