European computer scientists working in conjunction with IT industry partners have unveiled details of a "novel and comprehensive" security technology designed to protect broadband services from denial of service (DoS) attacks.

The Diadem Firewall project is funded by the EU's Information Society Technologies initiative to promote technology development. 

Diadem is being developed by a consortium including France Telecom, Polish Telecom, IBM Research, Imperial College London, University of Tübingen, Groupe des Ecoles des Télécommunications and Jozef Stefan Institute.

The group aims to fight distributed DoS attacks that typically use thousands of compromised home and business computers (or zombies) to bring down corporate systems, often as part of a blackmail attempt.

DDoS attacks affected over 13 per cent of businesses in the UK at a cost of more than £558m in 2004 alone, according to figures from the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.

"There is no doubt that DoS attacks are a growing issue as more and more services, such as online games, IP telephony, television over IP and e-shopping, are provided to broadband users through the internet," said Yannick Carlinet, project coordinator for the Diadem project.

"It is a crucial and vulnerable aspect of broadband security and will become even more so in the future as more users move over to broadband connections."