US Patent 7779470 Server denial of service shield

A method, apparatus, and computer instructions for responding to a denial of service attack. The method comprising from a remote data processing system detects an occurrence of the denial of service attack in which invalid credentials are presented to the data processing system. Connections from the remote data processing system to the data processing system are blocked in response to detecting the occurrence of the denial of service attack. A command is selectively sent to a server data processing system to block connections from the remote data processing system, in response to detecting the occurrence the denial of service attack.