Providing defense mechanisms against computer hackers and attacks on computing infrastructure has been an increasingly significant concern with the growing importance of network-based computing. With the growth of network-based computing over the Internet and the growing reliance on cloud computing services, protecting computers and servers connected to a network from malicious network-based attacks has become a significant issue for businesses and organizations. For example, hackers may attack a computing service over a network using denial-of-service attacks. SYN flooding is a particularly popular denial-of-service tactic. In a SYN flood attack, an attacker sends a succession of SYN requests to a target system in an attempt to overwhelm the target system's resources so that it becomes unresponsive to legitimate requests. Computing service providers must account for and protect against such attacks while maintaining an effective level of service to their customers.